China at a Threshold: Exploring Social Change in Techno-Social Systems 2019046189, 2019046190, 9781138740785, 9781315183220

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China at a Threshold

Once the world’s most technologically advanced civilisation, China is poised to yet again take this mantle, having made incredible technological strides over recent decades; but what does this in fact mean? What will this mean for Chinese society, and what ramifications might it have for the future? This book offers an account of social change under the growing influence of communications technology in media-saturated urban China. The challenges presented by the rise of technology and its pervasive nature in the mediation of all facets of everyday life pose questions not just for Chinese society but for all contemporary media societies. Drawing on theories from the philosophy of technology and conceptual tools from political anthropology, this title moves beyond debates surrounding mediative technology as a liberating or malevolent force. China at a Threshold addresses academic concerns surrounding communications technology and state control, looking for an interpretative approach to understand the role media might play in social change so that we might ascertain its impact on social relations. Urging a reconsideration in our understanding of technology as neither liberative nor oppressive, the author advances a proposal that brings social forces into play in their own right. Taking inspiration from thinkers in philosophy and anthropology, this title investigates storytelling and liminal characters as real agents in social change so that we might identify alternative forces for change not reducible to technological impact or human proclivity. James B. Cuffe is an anthropologist lecturing with the School of Society, Politics and Ethics at University College Cork, Ireland. His research focuses on technology in everyday life through cross-cultural comparisons.

Contemporary Liminality Series editor: Arpad Szakolczai, University College Cork, Ireland Series advisory board: Agnes Horvath, University College Cork, Ireland Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University, Denmark Harald Wydra, University of Cambridge, UK

This series constitutes a forum for works that make use of concepts such as ‘imitation’, ‘trickster’ or ‘schismogenesis’, but which chiefly deploy the notion of ‘liminality’, as the basis of a new, anthropologically-focused paradigm in social theory. With its versatility and range of possible uses rivalling and even going beyond mainstream concepts such as ‘system’ ‘structure’ or ‘institution’, liminality is increasingly considered a new master concept that promises to spark a renewal in social thought. In spite of the fact that charges of Eurocentrism or even ‘moderno-centrism’ are widely discussed in sociology and anthropology, it remains the case that most theoretical tools in the social sciences continue to rely on taken-for-granted approaches developed from within the modern Western intellectual tradition, whilst concepts developed on the basis of extensive anthropological evidence and which challenged commonplaces of modernist thinking, have been either marginalised and ignored, or trivialised. By challenging the assumed neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian foundations of modern social theory, and by helping to shed new light on the fundamental ideas of major figures in social theory, such as Nietzsche, Dilthey, Weber, Elias, Voegelin, Foucault and Koselleck, whilst also establishing connections between the perspectives gained through modern social and cultural anthropology and the central concerns of classical philosophical anthropology Contemporary Liminality offers a new direction in social thought. Titles in this series 9. Divinization and Technology The Political Anthropology of Subversion Edited by Agnes Horvath, Camil Roman and Gilbert Germain 10. The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil Tricksterology Agnes Horvath and Arpad Szakolczai 11. China at a Threshold Exploring Social Change in Techno-Social Systems James B. Cuffe For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ sociology/series/ASHSER145

China at a Threshold Exploring Social Change in Techno-Social Systems

James B. Cuffe

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 James B. Cuffe The right of James B. Cuffe to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cuffe, James B., author. Title: China at a threshold : exploring social change in techno-social systems / James B. Cuffe. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Contemporary liminality | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019046189 (print) | LCCN 2019046190 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138740785 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315183220 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media—Social aspects—China. | Information technology—Social aspects—China. | Technology—Social aspects— China. | Technology and state—China. Classification: LCC HN740.Z9 M338 2020 (print) | LCC HN740.Z9 (ebook) | DDC 302.230951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046189 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046190 ISBN: 978-1-138-74078-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-18322-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Helen, Bertie, & Qingyue, for their love, patience and support, and in fond memory of Fiona

Contents

Preface Apologia Acknowledgements

viii xii xiii

Introduction

1

1

China calling

10

2

China at a threshold

23

3

Approaching technology

38

4

Media in China

58

5

The social manifold

71

6

Incongruent dreams

87

Conclusion

104

Index

110

Preface

This book is for scholars interested in an alternative paradigm that re-evaluates the content of mainstream China studies, and indeed a lot of mainstream media debates on a China in transition. Such debates have predicted the rise or fall of the Chinese Communist Party based on a range of factors such as the economic opening up in the 1980s, the rise of mediative technologies in the late 1990s or the increased social disparities more openly apparent in the last ten years. Such debates derive in part from the ‘Needham Question’, that is, ‘Why is China not Europe?’ or why did a civilisation that led the world in science and technology fall so far behind, and when can we say that China has caught up with the West? While China is the field site for exploring the subject matter of communications technology and social change, this is not an ethnographic account of China nor Chinese society: it is an exploration of technological use and effect in urban Chinese society and presents an alternative frame for understanding China at a threshold, suspended in permanent liminality. In the build-up to the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, I found myself standing at a busy intersection directing traffic whilst being filmed by a regional television station. This was not an everyday occurrence for anyone involved, an Irish foreigner directing traffic in Shanghai, much to the bemusement of onlookers and annoyance of weary drivers. As explained by our handler, the purpose of our endeavours was to show the enthusiasm with which foreigners were helping Shanghai prepare for the hosting the World Expo in 2010. Our small contribution was in cultivating ‘proper’ road manners: cyclists should dismount and give right of way to pedestrians, cars should heed both cyclists and pedestrians and a healthy respect shown all round. This experience stayed with me as an interesting convergence of multiple vectors across a ‘modernising’ and opening China, the role of media and an Occidentalism at work in cultivating a new and global Chinese citizenry. It led me to pursue research on communication and its relationship with technology. What intrigued me was wondering how to understand communications technology as a techno-social force within (but also apart from) the forces of globalisation. In China, this subject is especially inviting considering the role of the state in monitoring and developing the media and in recognition of the impact media has in social development. On that hot, humid summer day in Shanghai, doing our best to maintain some authority over vehicles speeding past

Preface ix us, our handler impressed upon us with all sincerity the importance of what we were doing. This was no mere photo opportunity to fill a few seconds of airtime. This was a newsworthy item. Our atrocious attempts at controlling the traffic were farcical and at times even dangerous, but our handler insisted we persevere in our humble duties to assist in helping Shanghai citizens gain an awareness that the world was watching with interest even if they were not. This title draws on the valuable insights of anthropology and in particular the theoretical insights of the International Political Anthropology forum; by understanding concepts, practices and perspectives from outside modernity, we may be able to develop a conceptual toolkit with which to shed light on features of our modernity. This title draws particularly strongly on the work of Arpad Szakolczai, whose development of the key anthropological concept of liminality and subsequent characterisation of modernity as permanent liminality is a crucially insightful approach. Formulated by van Gennep in 1909 to describe the middle stage in ritual practices, liminality is a stage whereby participants during a rite of passage are displaced from their former identities yet not yet rehabilitated with new social forms, this concept grants focus to the dynamic nature of human experience – not only human experience, but further, grants purchase on the internally differentiating processes for identity and meaning formation. As the title of this book proposes, I make an argument for China not being in a state of transition but at a threshold point, in a state of permanent liminality. The importance of distinguishing such a status at the level of wider society is important, as such periods can drive changes in behaviour in wider society. In determining this case, there are an array of anthropological concepts that can help illuminate social processes at work. The trickster figure, introduced by Radin and developed by both Turner and Horvath, is, it might seem, a key indicator of whether we can identify liminalityat-work, and so from such concepts we can strive to examine whether China is at such a threshold moment. By identifying this we might facilitate more cultural comparative work on liminality and precipitate better identification of large-scale societal liminal periods (see also in this series Cesara Silla and Amin Sharifi Isaloo). In this way, this title develops with no small help from the framework developed by the journal International Political Anthropology authors and scholars. The use of the term threshold follows Bateson (2002), who argues that all perception is limited by our perception threshold and that what we can know, our working knowledge, is inherently limited as a function of this threshold. This is not the same thing as saying by increasing our threshold we gain greater truth or understanding; that would be a fallacy and an error that much of modern human society appears to have been seduced by. By querying China (whatever China might be) and identifying it as at a threshold is to suggest the seduction of Chinese society under permanently liminal conditions vis a vis Szakolczai (2014), whereby greater and greater efforts to progress only further institutionalise the conditions and experience of liminality at the wider social level. With these questions in mind, the aim is to contribute to studies on liminality and suggest how we might mobilise the concept for large-scale social studies. The book is born out of existing works that propose a relationship between

x Preface understanding modernity as permanently liminal with my proposal that China – as a ‘new’ technological society – is at such a threshold. How and why this might be the case brings our poor understanding of the technological and the social effects of technology into sharp focus, and this title will form one small contribution in an area where urgent future research is required. This leads us to my proposal for congruency manifolds as a space within which the relative incongruency of experience of the self and society (societal expectations) form a stimulus towards resolution, This manifold cannot be comprehended in its totality; therefore, the relay of experiential understanding between the self and wider society needs to pass through a transition point, which appears to be the role or cultural function of the trickster and other liminal figures. At the heart of this argument is an appreciation of the effect of technology within cultural transmission. This proposal is illustrated through three case studies to show how such a manifold might be at work and offer an explanatory framework for understanding cultural transmission, in one form at least. Ethnocentrism is a primary concern in any work that crosses cultural or epistemological boundaries. Any author is biased, by their own society, upbringing, experiences, and it is unclear to what degree one can ever adequately escape one’s culture to either look at one’s own society or to properly understand another. Yet if technology guides society and its values, then it is prudent to try and gain an unfamiliar perspective by looking at technology from outside of one’s own culture. If, on the other hand, technology is a tool for extending the capabilities of humanity, then again it is useful to look for unfamiliar examples of usage so that a better or more holistic appreciation of technology might be gained. With this in mind, I carried out research in China in order to consider and learn about technology in an unfamiliar environment, partly in an ethnographic sense but more to allow for at least some distance from the author’s own mundane life and its everyday experiences of technology, a conscious move towards a yet-to-be mundane life that had to be learned and experienced anew. A further concern impacting on this study has been an unease with how mainstream media and academic ‘specialists’ deploy concepts for use in relation to contemporary China that can colour or obscure our understanding of events in China, e.g., that the internet will herald a new era for democracy by increasing pressure on the ruling party and facilitating protests in favour of civil liberties. China was decided upon as a field of study for exploring communications technology and to provide an unfamiliar environment in which to think about technology, looking to China for reasons of distance and unfamiliarity so that mundane experiences of technology might be refreshed. Of course, an unfamiliarity with the mundane in China is equally problematic in that one may make assumptions or misunderstandings of events and practices due to a lack of what we might call cultural fluency. Yet the positives outweigh the risks in trying to establish new light and new experiences of how technology might influence society. If, as a cultural foreigner, one needs to learn something anew, then all the better once one is aware of one’s bias, perspective and historical tradition weighing down upon

Preface xi their investigation. It is not something that one can or should necessarily escape from but rather be aware of. This being said, it is very important to note the overt difficultly in making any general or universal statements about China given the complexity of her society, vastness of her territory, variety in cultures and languages. As such, I ask the reader to be wary of any notions they might draw about China-in-the-general from the topics discussed in specific here. It is also evident that the cases studies as they appear here are forced to carry excess weight. The examples explored in Chapter 4 only have strong resonance in the south-east of China, for example, even if the underlying pattern can be discerned elsewhere in and outside of China. The objective here is to talk about China, but with a focus on technology and how technology impacts upon social change in a few particular ways so that we might say something general about technology rather than about China. Thus, the exploration here is tentative, with the hope and expectation that the framework presented can be further tested with ethnographic materials. James Cuffe Beijing, July 2019

Bibliography Bateson, G., 2002. Mind and Nature. New York: Hampton Press. Szakolczai, A., 2014. Living Permanent Liminality. Irish Journal of Sociology, 22(1), 28–50.

Apologia

This title arises out of personal experiences of the rapid social and technological change undertaken in China during my time there as a student and subsequently as a researcher. The question of how does technological change affect social dynamics struck me with great curiosity and motivated me to attempt some research on this topic. This led to a questioning of what we might mean when we talk of technology in the first place and to what extent such a question might falsely impose an abstraction on embedded social and cultural processes. This title then struggles with the methodological dilemma of approaching a moving subject of study whilst trying to maintain awareness of one’s gaze and looking to propose a model for understanding some aspect of cultural transmission, all central issues of anthropological concern, with this being but a minor offering to the existing literature.

Acknowledgements

This manuscript has its origins in my PhD work, conducted under the careful supervision of Professor Árpád Szakolczai (UCC) and Professor Jörn-Carsten Gottwald (Bochum U.). As any student is indebted to those who guide them along the PhD journey, I am further indebted for the additional skills, training, insights and experiences afforded to me. Amongst these experiences was time spent in the convivial community that is the International Political Anthropology Summer School, a wholly excellent endeavour under the guidance of Agnes Horvath and inspiring academics such as Bjørn Thomassen (Roskilde) and Harald Wydra (Cambridge). The Theory & Philosophy Summer School was another venue held at Blackwater Castle that broadened horizons and widened circles. At these summer schools, wonderful friends and colleagues were met, and a special mention is warranted for Onur Bakir, Tom Boland, Lorcan Byrne, Siún Carden, Julian Davis, Derrick Fiedler, Daniel Gati, Barry Healy, Amin Sharifi Isaloo, Joanna Lenihan, Patricia McGrath, John O’Brien, Tony O’Connor, John O’Neil (RIP), Jesenko Tešan and Sitara Thobani, to name only a few of so many of the special influences within and around the summer schools. At University College Cork I wish to say a special thanks to Drs Kieran Keohane and James Fairhead, with whom I have had innumerable conversations on innumerable topics. Without their counsel and sage advice, I would not have achieved as much as I have. My colleagues in the Department of Sociology and Criminology have given me every support, and I thank them sincerely, particularly my criminology colleagues Orla Lynch, Katharina Swirak and James Windle. Previous colleagues from further afield include Paul Clogher, Colette Colfer, Jing Feng, Ching Keane, Lan Li, Jill O’Mahony, Emma Riordan, Catherine Sullivan, Natasha Underhill, Liping Varley and more for their support and generosity of spirit and time. I trust people will forgive that I am limited by time, space and memory in truly thanking all those who have played substantial parts in getting this manuscript to completion. It simply would not have happened without the tireless help and insight of Kayla Rush, who read and reread more of this manuscript than anyone might wish; her critique and suggestions greatly improved the final quality. I wish to thank Conach Gibson-Feinblum and Iris Maher for helping prepare the finished

xiv Acknowledgements version, and a thank you to the editors at Routledge, whose patience has been greatly appreciated. A heartfelt thanks again to Árpád, without whom this intellectual adventure would not occur. Thank you all.

Introduction

The study of technology is of paramount importance in our increasingly augmented world, through pervasive technologies coupled with learning algorithms and autonomous systems. Technology is both ubiquitous and embedded. The current paradigm shift towards the Internet of Things is literality reality-altering. However, outside of interested communities (academics, technologists etc.) society at large is sleepwalking in technology’s wake. The problematic I wish to investigate is the impact of technological development, particularly communications technology, on society. This board concern will be elucidated later, but the core warning is that we are not taking proper account of the effects of technology on society. Some will argue that this might be impossible. Collingridge’s dilemma has been presented as simply not solvable –given the development of new technologies, we cannot know their social impacts, because new technologies are not yet mundane, and when they are mundane it is too late to effectively regulate them, and, at any rate, effective oversight in the first instance requires effective knowledge derived from an experience of the mundane, which new technologies are most certainly not. It is imperative to develop an understanding of what a regulated technological space could look like, which, in turn, can only arise from an understanding of how the technological transforms the social and how the social adapts to the technological. Therefore, this title responds to limitations in current thinking on technology and its social effects by drawing on history and ethnography as the critical and indispensable method for capturing social change: ‘It is precisely the sudden importance of micro processes lodged in moments of transformation that privileges an ethnographic approach’ (Burawoy & Verdery 1999: 3). Studies in the anthropology or sociology of media, cultural studies and many other disciplines already offer valuable insights into key technologies, but there is still room to establish a wider scale appraisal of technology in and through society that can account for the large-scale effects of small-scale (everyday) processes. That we are in a transformative technological period in human development is evident with some common examples: When we consider the impact of online or digital dating applications, there emerges a tendency to essentialise an individual’s particular features in order to produce ‘matches’ – i.e. hobbies, perceived attractiveness, education and net worth. In such dating applications where matches are calculated by algorithms,

2 Introduction a commercial entity’s interest in market share and profitability is the motivating factor for establishing a relation between individuals. This is not the same motivation as looking for love or romance, which is presumably desired by the individuals taking part. In applications like Tinder, meanwhile, where the individuals do the matching themselves, the primary element for matching is the visual appearance, thereby reducing a host of eccentricities and life experiences to an image on a screen. The rights or wrongs of dating applications are not the immediate concern; it is, rather, the change in the formation of relationships that is the focus. Where previously relationships might be formed by matchmakers, negotiations and arranged marriages (again, the right or wrong of which is not up for debate here), the primary difference is the isolation of direct human contact in favour of physically dislocated and distant human contact. This difference, while pervasive in many contemporary societies, is something that is not yet fully understood in terms of its effects at a wider societal level. Digital music is a similarly interesting phenomenon, and one that has been with us for a relatively longer period. Digital music is readily available from the moment of desire; it is ‘on demand’. Before the advent of radio and analogue technologies, music was an inherently social activity occurring at particular times and places – for festivals, carnivals and celebrations of many kinds, from funerals to weddings. The most skilful musicians would play the most prestigious events and therefore would only be heard at particular times in one’s life. Due to modern technological developments, we can listen to practically any style of music on demand at any time of day or night in the privacy of our homes. We can even attend a live performance of previously deceased musicians! This example is expressed par excellence by the ‘live’ concert performance by rap artist Tupac at Coachella in 2012. This event occurred 15 years after his death and was made possible using the Pepper’s Ghost theatre technique.1 While this event may (currently) be an outlier, it is certain that technology has altered the musical experience so that it is today available to anyone with the appropriate technological resources, e.g. CD player, radio, internet connection. The necessity of a physical human musician’s involvement is diminished or removed entirely. This is not an argument that technology is somehow bad for music, nor that people should not have access to music in the way they desire; it is rather to point out that the human relationship to music has fundamentally changed with increased technological ability, and that this change mirrors other fundamental changes in human experience of human activities. We often purport to develop disciplines and policies based on real human experiences, but such efforts often delimit the types of experiences we wish to study by replicating them in the lab (e.g. behavioural economics) or surmising from ‘big data’ without recourse to the dynamic and often messy nature of life in the fullest of its expression. The value of anthropology and ethnography has always been its attempt to try and engage with daily life, even if we have not always had the appropriate conceptual toolkit with which to work. This study is an effort to explore the impact of technology on social relations during a period of transition using anthropological concepts such as permanent liminality (Szakolczai 2000) and trickster (Radin 1988; Horvath 2013), and this study is site specific, namely China.

Introduction 3 China has a particular constellation of cultural, historical and political factors in play that make it a unique focus for study in relation to technology and society. There have been rapid social changes in China since the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and not least the opening up and economic reforms (改革开放Gǎigé Kāifàng) of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. China has undergone incredible societal changes since the reform era of Deng Xiaoping. The population of Shenzhen rose from tens of thousands in the late ’70s to over 12 million today. Then there was a policy focus on the scientific development of society (科学发展观Kēxué Fāzhǎnguān) under Hu Jintao (2003–2012). This was an overt call for trust in the strides made by science and technology and has subsequently been credited with generating stability in a country undergoing rapid social change off the back of huge economic growth. China is commonly portrayed as being in transition, originally derived from economic terms in that it was moving from a planned economy to a socialist market economy under reforms. Interpretations of this transition led many scholars and commentators to suppose an eventual and inevitable collapse of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], the introduction of democracy and the adoption of Western liberal values. This historical and political backdrop provides a persuasive argument for exploring the effects of technology in contemporary China, where a number of threads converge: faith in technological development, faith in scientific education and thinking, a Communist Leninist-style dictatorship that can implement ideas on a grand scale quickly in comparison to Western democracies and rapid growth and change in both technological complexity and social development. The context for this book, then, is trying to understand a society in transition against the backdrop of rapid technological development. The contemporary debates on whether or not increasing technological complexity and the resulting communicative capacity will lead China towards increased transparency and accountability and even perhaps democracy is interesting if perhaps fundamentally flawed for its dichotomy. The debate hangs on perceptions of technological development as beneficial or negative for society at large. A great deal of research on media and especially the internet is carried out under a democratisation framework that argues for a natural link between increasing technological capability, civilisation progress and adoption of democratic and liberal values, but this approach rightly has its critics: the question of whether the Internet will democratize China implies an essentially Western-centric view that treats China as the inscrutable and inferior ‘other’ waiting to be converted to ‘one of us’ . . . the liberal democratic thinking that conflates freedom of speech with democracy is problematic in itself, as democracy is often linked with the market place, while freedom of expression is equated with free circulation of commodity in this line of argument . . . the democratization framework fails to acknowledge the complexity of China’s past and present. (Meng 2010: 502)

4 Introduction We can see that the waters are muddy, as to talk about technology and communication is to immediately get caught up in surrounding theories, debates and ideologies about what is or is not happening, and particularly with regards to how things should be happening. There is no fine solution here, only to carefully and slowly move through these waters by feeling the stones underneath.2 Understanding liminal experiences in cultural transmission is increasingly urgent in a world that appears to be simultaneously fragmenting and undergoing increasing homogenisation. We are born into a world that already exists, a society that precedes us and often, though not always, outlasts us. We are a constituent part of a society that carries with it social and cultural knowledge which, in turn, is transmitted through the generations. We learn how to be a part of this continuing societal phenomenon, but it is not entirely clear how we learn to be a part of this ongoing dynamic system. In ages past, such learning would take place via experience and communicated via word of mouth, via visual and sensory engagement, later via texts, artwork, music and so on. For early humanity, cultural transmission occurred in a spatially and, one could say, temporally bounded manner, yet in contemporary society cultural transmission can skip entire biological generations due to advances in and proliferation of communications technology. Furthermore, a theme common to the thinkers employed in this title is a sense that contemporary society is at odds with itself, that is to say society is at a threshold, drenched in uncertainty in the face of manifest social complexity (Winner 1992) outside the scope of individual comprehension, resulting in the very fracturing of cognition (Horvath 2013). Media, the plural of medium, now vaguely refers to the transmission of any information via technical means. Medium, in Latin, refers to the middle state or middle condition, an intervening condition or an intervening substance. This middle-ness is a theme that we see come through again but for now it is enough to consider contemporary usage of media as referring to – at base – the combination of two human propensities: communication and technology. This intimate combination of communication with technology and the development of this relationship has radically altered our facilities for inter-human engagement and for cultural transmission, and without an adequate framework for understanding how this happens. I propose the existence of what I term congruency manifold for outlining how transmission may occur between the macro and micro scales of human society. What follows in this title is a proposal arising out of a number of years of ethnographic work and philosophical exploration. Whilst it does not offer immediate solutions to our many contemporary predicaments, it is hoped that by attempting to address those predicaments with a more illuminating framework, we can better discern the processes and identify potential orientations for the future. Chapter 1 begins with a caution about the dangers inherent in making any generalisations about China. We begin by introducing and developing ideas within discursive practices about China and set much of the groundwork for the later ethnographic examples. The necessity of this groundwork is evident in the problematic of even describing China as ‘communist’ or ‘post-socialist’, as these terms

Introduction 5 prescribe rather than describe an object of study according to a Western-based theoretical lens. Therefore, we start with an overview of approaches to China: Where and what is China? How are discourses around China created? Chapter 1 continues to identify our mode of understanding as progressive, which gives rise to an economic system where the individuated human is supposed to make rational choices towards maximisation of ends. Implications hold that capitalism and democracy go hand-in-hand, and that where one is present the other will arise, but this is factually incorrect: markets do not occur naturally but are a result of government policy and a myriad of social and cultural factors; additionally, democracy is historically contingent, while capitalism can arise under any sort of government, and we have comparatively recent examples of democracy being abandoned in order to preserve capitalist markets when the system is perceived to be under threat. In practice, governments in the West will adopt special contingencies to allow markets to continue functioning according to their imagined internal logics. The implications of a progressive understanding of the world invariably leads to a sceptical or derogatory view of China (or any other ‘developing’ nations) as an aberration from the Western ideal. This leads some commentators to assume that an increasingly free market in China with increased access to information thanks to new communication technologies will lead to China’s inevitable democratization and therefore a return to the fold, the one path of a universal and convergent history. Some commentators assert that ‘disruptive’ technologies might exceed the capabilities of the CCP to maintain a hold on power and oust them overnight; on the other hand, other commentators argue that the gradual adoption and incorporation of new technology into Chinese everyday life will eventually force the CCP to change. Thus, for these scholars, the question is one of when China will become democratic. Some assume that technology is only possible within the context of economic liberalism, which in turn will lead to democratization; others assume that the increasing complexity of technology militates against government’s ability to restrict it, and thus it becomes the platform from which challenges to totalitarian control might be launched. However, there is as yet no proof that increased access to technology does anything to weaken autocratic governments. This shows an underlying problem where discursive practices are fault lines between competing worldviews or conflicting epistemologies. By ‘discursive practice’ it is meant here those debates that produce no new knowledge other than the debate’s own history; they act as a historiographical diagnostic tool. Parties to the debate hold positions on a shared concern based on different epistemological grounds and are thus incapable of overcoming the arguments of the other. Such discursive practices will not solve any problem but merely hide a paradox with the appearance of constructive and active scholarly debate. The aforementioned questions, rather than serving to guide us to answers, are instead better utilised to identify the root premises and assumptions that give rise to such questions in the first place. This usage of the term discursive practice is very different from the more traditional usage in anthropology, which understands a discursive practice as action and communication that serve to create meaning

6 Introduction dynamically over and above being purely representational. My usage is to understand a contradiction in available understanding without the ability to create new meaning due to epistemic limits. So we have a need to develop an alternate view with which to speak, and this alternative view is provided by the concept of permanent liminality. Chapter 2 introduces and explores this framework through the work of Szakolczai, and it is illustrated with specific reference to a historical period crucially important in the formation of modern China. The event under consideration is the Democracy Wall ‘movement’ of 1978, where along a street wall a public discourse took place regarding how the proper development of China could occur. The wide variety of ideas and practice of open expression took place not just in Beijing but in many cities around China; however, Xidan Street was the most vibrant occurrence for the circulation of social and political ideas. The Democracy Wall came to an end when Wei Jinsheng published his “Fifth Modernisation” – a call for private rights protected by a democratic polity. With the end of open debate for the future of China and final strengthening of Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power, the primary need for security and stability realises the institutionalisation of liminal conditions, and China continues in permanent liminality. Chapter 3 focuses on theories of technology and examines how ideas of technology are intertwined with both culture and ideology. Communications technology undoubtedly has an enormous effect on how culture is transmitted, but because it is an omnipresent element of our everyday lives, we barely notice its influence on our behaviour. It is merely part of our behaviour that increasingly mediates our experience and communication. After attempting to explicate some understanding of technology, we then move to looking at the use of technology in communication. In history, we perceive human tools to have followed a trajectory from ‘less complex’ to ‘more complex’, which reinforces an idea of a linear progression of human civilization. This idea of progression is strongly persuasive despite evidence to the contrary. The impact of our imagining of what technology is and the effects it has appears closely tied to a normative idea of progress while concealing the basic means of representation humans utilise to engage with each other and world. Chapter 3 explores this idea of progress after navigating what it means to engage with the world and how we conceive of ourselves as being-in-the-world (Heidegger 2008). The chapter concludes that the importance of faithful representations of our engagement with the world is readily understood, but due to the frenetic manipulation of images facilitated by technological capabilities, the faithful representations are concealed or drowned out, leading to an aimless grasping for stability in meaning. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 return to China and focus on developing case studies on the media in China. Chapter 4 introduces some of the socio-cultural background to political environment of the media in China while also drawing on the lessons of Chapter 2. Chapter 5 then moves forward, introducing some theoretical concepts and establishing a framework for understanding the cultural function of liminal characters and their role in social change. The chapter introduces a trickster character (more on this later) and concentrates on the work of Walter Benjamin and

Introduction 7 Mikhail Bakhtin to provide a new proposal for understanding the trickster character in the example used. To illustrate this argument, the contemporary trickster character of the GrassMud Horse is introduced. This satirical device made up of vulgar homophones lashes out at government censorship. Thus, it has assumed importance as a political symbol (both within and outside mainland China), but it only became popular because of a pre-existing sentiment; the Grass-Mud Horse character is illustrated using the anthropological concept of the trickster showing how liminal characters can flourish at the boundaries of meaning. These liminal characters can in turn be problematic in turning meaning away from stable forms and giving rise to destabilising conditions that help such tricksters flourish. Therefore, the trickster can be utilised as a manifest sign that liminal conditions are at work, and they serve to propagate them for their own interest. The Grass-Mud Horse is not anti-party per se; it is actually a narrative about subjectivity and lived experience. It depends on censorship for its very survival. The trickster figure offers potential experiential understanding to a community by drawing on the limits of one’s own experience and its incongruence with the norms and expectations of society. The relationship between individual and society is dialogical, but the transmission of experiential knowledge is unequal: society has a collective wealth of experience that the individual can draw upon but not fully comprehend. Individuals’ experiences have only limited transmission in and of themselves and between the insufficient cognitive abilities of the individual and the full repertoire of one’s culture, liminal characters such as the trickster act as focal points, vectors of communication for understanding one’s identity amidst the flux and change of society. Communications technology radically facilitates the field for such vectors to converge and dissipate, and therefore such liminal characters can have vastly exaggerated influence in our technologically complex social systems. Stories are a means of relaying experiences via narrative; therefore, stories help to confer wisdom (knowledge gained from experience), which many cultures around the world value more than ‘mere knowledge’ (knowledge born out of education). The value of wisdom over education is that direct personal experience allows for interpretation and understanding, whereas in education, knowledge is handed down as-is, with no room for interpretation, and understanding may or may not result. The latter proves attractive for those searching for stability but can fail to foster an interpretative, dynamic understanding of one’s place in society or to account for the changing nature of identity in experience. Language is an inherently social act, and it is always rooted in the lived world, but even so, we have no guarantee that another person will understand us fully, even if we’re talking the same language, because language is dynamic and experiential. Communications technology operates along this line; it mediates and necessarily imposes conditionality on the message, so interpretive forms of communication can ‘survive’ this process of mediation more effectively as they allow participation in mediative understanding. Chapter 5 then brings the insights from preceding chapters together so we can say something more of the impact of technology as a techno-social force in

8 Introduction social change. Technology is ‘ahistorical’ in that it is an activity that is a product of an ideology that sees technology occurring outside history; as such, it cannot be in ‘dialogic’ relationship with the individual and society, which are historical (Bakhtin 1981). Social development is necessarily dialogical, so the task is then to account or seek a model for the transmission of experiential understanding from those who-have to those who-have-not. The proposed model is for a social manifold through which movements and openings provide mediated arenas for liminal characters so that experiential understanding can be communicated via interpretation rather than explanation. The proposed ‘fields of incongruency’ is a descriptive term that portrays a role for communication in human cultural transmission that, once communicated, supersedes conventional understanding in favour of resonance, i.e. congruence between lived experiences. Restrictions on communications and/or technology regulation are shown to not inherently impede social development and that experiential understanding resonates within the social manifold, where incongruencies between expectations of values based on experience and the norms and values of society seek resolution. Crucially the social manifold speaks of an experiential move between understandings, from a pre- to a post-understanding. It therefore occurs in liminal conditions with liminal characters at play. The resolution of incongruency illustrates a loan of consciousness between an individual and wider society, facilitated by liminal characters such as the trickster that draw on and transgress the limits of the self and wider community. Such liminal characters may operate at the threshold (such as the trickster) or come to occupy the threshold due to changes in their marginal social status or peripheral experience. The social manifold unfolds and develops as an individual takes steps towards new reflective understanding in cognition of the relative incongruency between what they have known and what they may interpret through such liminal characters that communicate differing values and norms drawn from the changing coordinates of a dynamic society. Only if reflection can complete can the individual emerge a whole, realised subjectivity and move beyond being lost amidst the intermediacy of everyday life; should incongruencies remain a subject’s grasping for resolution immerses them in the frenetic imagery of our technological society further concealing the possibility for resolution. Chapter 6 provides a closer look at how such manifolds might operate using further case study material from China. First, this chapter elaborates on the history of the Chinese mass media, providing some context for the tension between media producers and the government: state regulators are trying their best to prevent sensationalist content from dominating the airwaves, while TV channels are producing exactly that kind of content in order to capture larger audience shares. This environment proved fertile for the talent search format that is very popular with global audiences. The talent-search show Super Girl was a massive hit on Chinese TV, and voting in the final round has been described as the largest democratic process that has ever taken place in China. Shows such as Super Girl might seem indicative of an opening of Chinese society towards more liberal and perhaps progressive attitudes, but we see that this may not be the case.

Introduction 9 Democracy is, in essence, a commodity for shows like this, and the number of similar shows has increased dramatically. The viewers are paying money to vote, and they’re performing unpaid labour by exercising that decision; the show is a simulated democracy for consumption rather than a reliable model of it. In fact, what is more interesting is the consuming of a process of identity-formation rather than participating in a ‘democratic’ process. Liminal characters do well on such shows for the very reason that they help foster reflective understanding within the social manifold and thus serve a cultural function: facilitating spectators’ need for understanding the changing and dynamic coordinates of their society’s norms and values. The permanent liminality paradigm poses a challenge to contemporary society, and in the conclusion some thoughts are presented as to how or whether we can we take a step in rehabilitating towards meaningful social development, particularly if we are missing proper guides and true masters of ceremonies are absent. The challenge of permanent liminality and an era where constant change and iteration bring unforeseen consequences needs to be addressed in a more directed manner. Establishing the manifold model whereby the incongruency of experiential meaning might be resolved via interpretation of liminal characters rather than imitation of them provides some tentative suggestions. Through this mechanism we are provided a means to renegotiate careful representations of subjective experience against different social coordinates, so that we might learn and take a step towards new social stability and social flourishing, or at least increase discussion in fruitful and interesting directions.

Notes 1 Pepper’s Ghost – named after John Henry Pepper, 1821–1900, who devised a technique using angles of light on glass to make images appear. 2 An expression made popular by Deng Xiaoping: crossing the river by feeling the stones (摸着石头过河mōzhe shítou guòhé).

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M., 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: Texas University Press. Burawoy, M., & Verdery, K., 1999. Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Heidegger, M., 2008. Being and Time. New York: Harper Perennial. Horvath, A., 2013. Modernism and Charisma. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Meng, B., 2010. Moving Beyond Democratization: A Thought Piece on the China Internet Research Agenda. International Journal of Communication, 4, 501–508. Radin, P., 1988. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schocken Books. Szakolczai, A., 2000. Reflexive Historical Sociology. London: Routledge. Winner, L., 1992. Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. 8th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

1

China calling

Introduction From the outset, to speak of China is prone to difficulties. One needs to know from what platform one speaks and appreciate how one’s gaze might construct rather than reveal. To begin, it is necessary to tackle these concerns, and this is a worthwhile effort for revealing underlying assumptions and their effects. The aim of this chapter is to provide a context for how I am going to approach China, to set out some existing perspectives and introduce some frameworks that inform much contemporary debate on China to bring into focus the gaze itself as a subject for attention. As this is a theme that is already covered expertly elsewhere (for an example par excellence see Said 1978), the purpose here is not to rehash old arguments but to draw on a few authors to show that contemporary debates are not establishing new ground. This discussion leads into a foray questioning the concept of modernity. Culturally distinct rationalities/modernities begin from a certain impetus, which Weber (1976) posits as religious but here, following Wagner, we describe as experiential and interpretative (2012: 249). Multiple modernities are better understood as practices of parallel world making (Wagner 2012). Then what manner of world making are we engaged in? This question needs to be highlighted to identify and underline one particular topic which is the focus of this title, that of technology and its social effects. The field within which I am attempting to uncover technology is in the idea of China and the discourse around China; this is in contrast to trying to reveal an objective external ‘Chinese’ reality and arguing that we can identify a particular specimen of technology at work in a particular environment. It is not to say that China is not there but that fruitful discussion can only take part with China rather than of China, and that as much as we might speak about a China over there we can equally question the idea of a Europe over here (O’Dubhghaill 2014). Our motivation is to try and gain perspective on the social impacts of technology, and for that it is useful to attempt to freshen our gaze by being conscious of the gaze itself. This can be done utilising the discourse on China.

The idea of China What might be termed ‘Modern China studies’ begins with the increasingly systematic study that roughly coincides with the establishment of the People’s

China calling 11 Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 (Perry 1994). Of course there are noteworthy studies prior to the establishment of the PRC; general studies on China date back sporadically to the early travel documents of Marco Polo in the 13th century and to Ibn Battuta in the 14th century. Some large-scale studies were carried out by researchers such as Joseph Needham, who is particularly noteworthy. Needham initiated an ambitious series of volumes under the title Science & Civilisation in China investigating the question: Why did China not develop and become ‘advanced’ such as the European societies were perceived to be? (Needham 1954). This issue remains pertinent today, as the question reappears regularly, albeit in different guises. Early scholarship on Needham criticised his work on a number of levels, but with one central critique being a methodological issue that encapsulates one major error in approaching China; Nathan Sivin, a collaborator of Needham, suggested that the ‘Needham Question’ was in fact misguided and assumed its own condition of possibility, noting that: It is striking that this question – Why didn’t the Chinese beat Europeans to the Scientific Revolution? – happens to be one of the few questions that people often ask in public places about why something didn’t happen in history. It is analogous to the question of why your name did not appear on page 3 of today’s newspaper. (1982: 51) Even before describing China we are often guilty of ascribing our own ideas upon a Chinese tapestry: Zhao writes that to call the current Chinese system capitalist or socialist is not just a matter of description. Rather, it is a matter of prescription in the sense that such a representation is intended to shape the reality that it pretends to describe, thus constituting part of ‘an intense struggle between two discourses that seek to appropriate its future for two alternate visions of history’. (2008: 49) Zhao’s highlighting of this intense struggle underlines the importance of studying evidence on its own terms rather than under some pre-existing teleological framework. Over the centuries, there have been many different approaches to China, with different goals and motivations. A cursory glance at a range of authors across the 18th and 19th centuries (John Barrow 1804; Henri Cordier 1872; Michel Chevalier 1840; John Davis 1840; George Staunten 1799) show ethnocentric accounts at work in their characterisations of China. Common to these writers’ portrayals of China is disbelief at the ‘backwardness’ of China in light of the progressive advancement being achieved in Europe. The Qing Empire and Chinese civilisation are routinely stylised as stagnant and decaying; it is interesting to note the idea that non-advancement is equal to decay rather than to stasis or alternative advancement. Mainstream European conceptions of advancement are within a

12 China calling single dimensional linear style of development; that is to say, one can plot the current state of development of any given society against every other, thereby creating a ranking order. The idea that nations and states can be ranked against each other needs an implicit or overt universal backdrop where values and measures are equally relevant (or identifiable) at all local sites. While in terms of scientific and technological development Europe was certainly advancing – progress with a small ‘p’, i.e., states of complexity in technical systems and scientific understanding were increasing – China was being understood in the historical and universal context of Progress with a capital ‘P’, i.e., Europe as a society was bettering itself in a normative sense, not just in complexity, but in moral and social development. In essence, a universalising conception of Progress married civilizational accomplishment with technological development. For example, Barrow (1804) contended that not only were the Chinese incapable of the kind of progress that Europe was sustaining but they furthermore did not comprehend the Progress that Europe was undergoing. In his attempts to understand this ‘civilizational impotency’, Barrow argued that what held the Chinese back was their apparent inability to theorise abstract principles, arguing that The practical application of some of the most obvious effects, produced by natural causes, could not escape the observation of a people who had, at an early period, attained so high a degree of civilization; but, satisfied with the practical part, they pushed their enquiries no further. (1804: 228) Both Barrow and Davis queried why particular kinds of knowledge used in particular settings or contexts were never abstracted to their principles so that they could be applied in other settings or contexts.1 Authors of the time explained away such presumed features of Chinese thought as cultural and biological features of the Chinese themselves, thereby underpinning ideas of racial inferiority. But from whence did European connotations of Progress and societal development arise? Kant argues for understanding the European Enlightenment through the creed of aude sapere or ‘dare to know’, and this manner of cognitive reasoning is conceived of as a liberated reason, i.e. not subject to any authority (Foucault & Rabinow 1984). This use of reason is for reasoning’s own sake – evident in the German term räsonieren. This liberating of reason to an abstract realm is devoid of content experience (Bakhtin 1993) and allows reason to develop under its own logic of rationality as a singular and particular construct of reason. Reason becomes universalising, outside of social constraints, abstract and ‘pure’. Such unfettered reason is implicitly and explicitly universalising in that it is presumed to stand apart from any context: authority, social or otherwise. To ensure that reason remains pure is to require critique, and Foucault subsequently characterises the Enlightenment as the age of critique (Foucault & Rabinow 1984), a mode of thought that constantly seeks to prevent reason returning to the experiential mode of life, devoid of the effects of care, emotion, wisdom, enchantment and so

China calling 13 on. For Kant, reason provides the exit from humanity’s immaturity of previous ages (Kant 1784). The use of such reason in the Enlightenment project aimed to liberate (Ausgang) humanity from the constraints (Unmündigkeit) of our social ailments, like inequality, poverty, racism and corruption, and so on. However, as critique can be applied not only to truth-claims but also to critiques of truthclaims, we encounter a Gordian knot. As Boland points out To analyse a discourse is to draw attention to the ways in which things are seen, the sorts of categories through which social phenomena are perceived and constructed. Analysing a ‘discourse’ means diagnosing and recognizing its effects and consequences and oftentimes disrupting the ‘truth-claims’ of the discourse or critiquing it. Initially this appears paradoxical, as it involves disrupting the truth-claims of critique, or critiquing critique. (2014: 109) But this is problematic, not least within the discipline of anthropology, as Lindstrom argues: Early moderns, as often observed, gave up the teleology of God’s promise (everything is working toward Judgement Day) merely to replace this with another future-centered historical narrative: we are learning more and more; we are coming closer and closer to certain truth; human knowledge, one day will be perfected. In this progressive narrative, anthropological understanding that can pass as true (corresponding to the real) also becomes good (leads to a better future). (2013: 70) We see then that the gaze, the approach towards any subject plays an integral role in the formation of that subject. Edward Said established this thesis in his book Orientalism: We must take seriously Vico’s great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities – to say nothing of historical entities – such locales, regions, geographical sectors as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. (1978: 89) The motivating question here that underlines the issues discussed thus far is one of distinction in difference: Why – we ask – is China different from Europe? In our portrayals of this questioning we do much work in establishing what we think is meant by both the idea of ‘China’ and, implicitly, the idea of ‘Europe’.

14 China calling

Why is China not Europe? Why is Europe not China? ‘Why is China not Europe?’ is similar to the Needham Question and is a common theme in contemporary Western China studies, where we try to understand specifically why China is not developing as Western nations do. We also question in what ways China differs and what historical processes have been at work to keep China from aligning or converging with a European universalising history of the world. This follows in the same vein as Weber’s question of why the development of techniques for ‘the scientific, the artistic, the political or the economic development . . . did not enter the path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?’ (1976: 25). These questions can be examined to see the influences they have had on the research being carried out within China studies research. One of the first observations to make relates to time and temporality; there is an inherent understanding of time in the European tradition as being linear and of history as having some convergent and universal quality. This is a probing statement, as it casts into doubt our immediate relation to our understanding of our place within a universal time, more developed now than at any time in the past, at a standpoint upon which we gain perspective over other times and places. But we see the implications immediately: universalising perspectives prescribe. These questions are borne from within the European Enlightenment tradition as an unfinished project – What is going to happen and how will we reach the next stage? Post-colonial studies and scholarship in contemporary China (recently: Zheng 2010; Zhang 2011; Wang 2011; Liang 2016) query the universalising perspective of Western academic research as holding to a cultural rather than objective understanding of time as linear; that the subjective nature of history becomes a framing perspective, far from neutral but both political and adjudicating/ imposing. To quote Zhang: I want to focus on the dialectic of Enlightenment and identity-formation within the philosophical-conceptual space of Enlightenment discourse, and seek to show that this very dialectic makes Enlightenment an intrinsically political notion from the onset, whose implications will unfold as Enlightenment gathers more and more historical substance on its way of ‘universal spread’. (2011: 12) Whereas Zhang’s project is to provide exegesis on the conventionally understood relationship between the Enlightenment and modern identity-formation, my aim is to explicate one particular strand emergent from the Enlightenment – that of a causal relationship between technological complexity and social progress – and subsequently to understand the role communications technology might play in social life, using contemporary China as a case study. The purpose is to evaluate the effects of increased technological complexity on social life and to seek out an alternative paradigm to conduct research that does

China calling 15 not fall prey to teleological premises. This follows previous work by other authors and is within the frame proposed by Zhang, who notes that: intrinsic teleological and rationalistic assumptions tend to blur and obscure the political-ontological struggle at the core of human civilization by aligning its energies and focuses (and, along with them, anxieties and fears) exclusively or primarily with the ‘frontiers of civilization’ understood to be a continuous struggle for survival, now framed and rationalized by the capitalistic mode of production. (2011: 25) Seeking out an alternative framework to account for social change is an urgent and important motivation given the difficulties current paradigms are met with: China is still not Europe and does not appear to be converging. One of the core puzzles for China not arriving as ‘modern’ and ‘Western’ lies in the assumed linkage between liberal economic systems and democracy. While economists can refer to a Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics by way of admitting to a Sinocentric path in distinction to a universal mode, the failure for democracy to materialise in China appears to many as counterintuitive to our understanding of how things should proceed. Reich reveals a deeper problem at work: Conventional wisdom holds that where either capitalism or democracy flourishes, the other must soon follow. Yet today, their fortunes are beginning to diverge. Capitalism, long sold as the yin to democracy’s yang, is thriving, while democracy is struggling to keep up. (Reich 2009) If capitalism does not entice democratic virtues, then not only can we not expect such a transformation in China, but we run the risk of corrupting our own political systems (and indeed many will argue there is much evidence for this in the US, UK and the EU) if relying on a false premise. Any causal relationship between market economics and adoption of democratic systems is presumptuous but again is mainstream (Wagner 2012: 85). Wagner tells us this idea for this causal relation is best exemplified in Parsons: The organization of markets, on the one hand, and politics and public administration, on the other, according to their own logics would lead to a performative superiority, and an increased capacity to adapt to novel circumstances, of any society that adopted such differentiation. Underlying such a view is the idea of freedom as the guiding normative principle of modern societies. The wholesale adoption of this principle, and its translation into institutions, makes these societies both normatively and functionally superior to all other societies in world history. (2012: 86)

16 China calling As a result, these logics then increase contact amongst different cultural products, norms, values and interests and seek political representation to protect those same freedoms, while concomitantly invoking a separation of politics from the economic arena. We can see how in quick succession we have entangled ourselves with history, democracy, technology and capitalism and no clear platform from which to engage these multiple dimensions. There have been dissenting voices on this progressive account of history; one alternative tradition to the positive linkage between capitalism and democracy is one characterising it as a relationship in tension: [Adorno and Horkheimer] provided the most extreme version of the theorem that the modern commitment to freedom and reason tends towards selfcancellation in its transformation into historically concrete forms. They see the origins of this regression in the very philosophy of the Enlightenment that, in its insistence of the knowability of the world, transforms all qualities into mere quantities of the same and reduces the unknown to the status of a variable that is subject to the rules of mathematical equations. (Wagner 2012: 7) Karl Polanyi (1957) shows in The Great Transformation how the occurrence of markets is far from a natural phenomenon but a product of government and intentional policy directives. David Graeber argues democracy is merely a contingent feature of the times, but when the basic capitalist structure is at risk, then democracy is dispensed with to protect the underlying socio-economic system (Graeber 2001: 10). We have seen examples of this in European Union nations, specifically Greece in 2010, Ireland in 2011, Italy in 2012 and Cyprus in 2013. That the ‘free’ marketplace is policed in order to allow it to operate under its own internal logic is interesting considering the deliberate intrusion by the Chinese state to protect their market against such free-market principles. Variations notwithstanding, there is perceived resonance between the phenomenon of technology, communication, free market economics and democracy; the relationships between them may be conceived in a negative or positive correlation: for example in an end of history framework, Fukuyama (1989) argues for an attitude of scepticism towards China as somehow gone astray and a malformed variation from what might be described as a Western ideal. Research under such viewpoints attempt to place China by employing terms such as ‘post-totalitarianism’, ‘post-authoritarianism’, ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ and so on. The terms inherently suggest an abnormality to a preconfigured idea of what should be the case given properly configured ‘modern’ relations between economics, communications technology and democracy. At the core of this grand and abstract thinking is the conception of what it means to be human, even how it is to be human, and something that will be given time and space for consideration in Chapter 2, but first we continue with prescriptions of China.

China calling 17

Modernity and a ‘modern China’ In The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (现代中国思想的兴起 Xiàndài Zhōngguó Sīxiǎng De Xīngqǐ, 2004–2009), Wang Hui seeks to address the nature of modernity in Chinese thought and aims to identify the currents in Chinese intellectual thought that might be a result of distinctly Western modes of thinking. The idea of distinctly Eastern or Western thought is a paradox, and common to mainstream Western or Eastern approaches in social theory until the 1980s, the treatment of modernity as having a temporal embodiment and therefore presented as an object of study divorced from its own historical circumstances (see Thomassen 2010 for more). While Wang’s aim is not to essentialise China, it is to try and avoid being ensnared by a Western universalism in the hope that doing so will allow for a new research agenda that fosters and heeds difference without resorting to relativism (Cuffe 2013) – a seeking of equal ground for unequal parties in a modern world. In outlining debates on the problematic of modernity through the 1990s, Thomassen argues that there is a danger that such debates can simply become a fetish: During the 1990s modernity was pluralized into a variety of forms: possible modernities, multiple modernities, parallel modernities, manifold modernities, alternative modernities, competing modernities, reflexive modernities – the list is still unfolding. (Thomassen 2010: 322) With Eisenstadt (2000), we see the emergence of multiple modernity theory, where the comparable problems faced by societies across the world is a sign of convergence showing similar social changes taking place across culture and across regions. In this context, for example, Eisenstadt’s thesis does not argue for distinct modernities unrelated to each other but for modernities of which there are multiple kinds. Thus, different conceptions of the social good are core in establishing those varieties of modernity that share identifiable and similar problems but result in different projects in tackling them. Wagner, in his efforts to situate modernity, conveys the importance of the institutionalisation of normative principles as way-finders or markers in our engagement with politics and economics (2012). The economic subject of Enlightenment inheritance derives from an understanding that a reasonable and free individual will make rational choices amongst scarce resources to achieve a maximisation of self-orientated interests. In Western nations the institutionalisation of the Enlightenment principles reason and freedom have led to our current neoliberal economic system. However, anthropological research has consistently failed to find the favoured rational-choice creature of economics in a cultural environment. In a rational-choice approach, economists and political scientists tend to describe social relations in terms that reduce them to objects suitable for mathematical predilection. The logic that regulates the economic system is an abstracted and rationalised model of the same supposed social system. The efficacy of rational-choice theory is difficult to substantiate, as anthropologists can clearly show divergent

18 China calling interests amongst ends contextualised by different value and cultural systems. If there can be no universal and abstract rationality of ends (within conflicting systems of values in different cultures), then it calls into question any abstract process (rationality) that might meet those ends. Bakhtin (1993) uses the term content-sense to denote the missing element in this vacuous nature of abstract rational thought, which he in particular chastises the neo-Kantians for. In her article on the need for an international political anthropology, Horvath makes an argument that more neatly summarises the core issues arising from the discussion so far, namely, the problem is the privileging of abstract rational thought which is devoid of sense (2008). ‘Sense’ is both sense as tool of perception (sight, sound etc.) and sense as in meaning (perception of the good, beauty etc). The problem of the abstract assumed universal (or common) desires that become reflected in a perceived common politics that in turn motivates actors but under misguided or fallacious impulses leads us to our contemporary political predicament: Modern politics has made, and continues to make, extremely ambitious, overarching claims, about working for the happiness of the greatest number of people; about rights, democracy and the participation of every citizen; nothing short of promising, at least ‘potentially’, the realization of an earthly paradise. (Horvath 2008: 255) What is this striving for earthly paradise? Is it unique to a European condition or a human trait? Is it an overcoming of immediate problems or a utopian goal? Wagner proposes that we can understand certain basic ontological problématiques of humanity at large and that these primary problématiques which face any given human collectivity are economic, political and epistemic (2012: 74). This mirrors the Boasian perspective that “humans everywhere face the same epistemological dilemmas” (Handler 2004: 489). In this context, a modern society is one that consciously attempts to address these questions, and Wagner argues this is the common feature across contemporary societies or modernities. These basic problématiques would then lend themselves as markers through which a useful comparable analysis could be made that would respect the particularity of local needs and resources under the rubric of a recognisable type of social experience. Various different answers or solutions to these problématiques are possible and can each be ‘legitimate’ as a response, even if some are not as effective or beneficial as others. This allows a framework to be developed by which there can be multiple or successive modernities; for example, the Communist Party of China’s [CCP] grasp of power and role as historical originator of contemporary Chinese sovereignty coincides with a constant striving for superior or better solutions. Should the CCP fail to instigate such solutions, they fail as legitimate rulers of their subjects (as opposed to citizens), resulting in the fact that their reign shall end or transform into some new entity. This mobilisation to provide a superior ‘answer’ entails a ‘collective creativity’ that is, Wagner argues, not reducible to

China calling 19 cultural or civilizational determination (even though there may be pathdependency) . . . there is no guarantee of the lasting superiority of the new answer, as any new response may generate new fault lines; thus any view of societal ‘evolution’ as necessarily entailing learning processes that lead to higher levels of human social organization is equally flawed. (2012: 77) Through this understanding, Wagner calls for a re-theorising of modernity for sociology as predicated on a particular experience in time and space, in which this experience is related to the treatment of those aforementioned problématiques. Wagner argues that contemporary problématiques are the result of parallel developments from this basis that should assume a worldly interconnectedness rather than simultaneous yet separate developments. These are not universal and perennial problems but rather an acknowledgement of diverse problématiques relating to time and space and disparate cultural programs, yet, according to Wagner: [focused] on the long-term interconnections in world history that not only permit historico-sociological comparison but also suggest that there may be some proximity or family resemblance, between basic problématiques that human beings have tried to address collectively at various places and points in time. (2012: 154) Therefore, modernity as such is not then the diffusion of European functional superiority but the ‘onset of parallel processes of world-making, inspired by the modern imaginary but pursued under conditions of considerable power differentials’ (Wagner 2012: 163). By this understanding, paths may or may not converge, but similarly there remains the possibility for comparative frameworks, as these modalities are an experiential understanding of an underlying problématique. There may also be plural experiences, yet ontologically the concerns remain for creating a collectivity that tackles certain problématiques at certain coordinates of a society’s historical path. This can be referred to as plural modalities, a term that is introduced as a means of understanding different experiences within an openended historical process. If we ‘moderns’ are promised an earthly paradise, then our work-plan to realise such ambition is surely the favoured plan of all cultures and societies; how could it not be? Then any deviations or differences from our plan are not only difficult to understand, even intolerable, but an actual affront to our own charter. Research questions that then seek to suggest how China will revert to a ‘normal’ path of socio-cultural development depend on this presumed rationality and a coherence of desired ends. At base, such research questions could be accused of being ethnocentric, and whether or not China moves towards democratic practice, or how a ‘free’ market might develop that will enforce the retreat of the state, or indeed how China might develop mechanisms to maintain an abnormal divergence are symptomatic of the problems we are encountering approaching China.

20 China calling Meng refers to such perspectives as myth, that the ‘free’ market being an antithetical force against state control and delivering the ‘people’s choice’ is disproven by any analysis of the interplay of state apparatus with market institutions: ‘instead of challenging the status quo, these myths reinforce and naturalize the existing power structure’ (2009: 268). Instead, research should – and is – moving towards examining China on its own terms rather than on some perceived transition from one stage to another stage that is inherently divergent or unifying. Intellectuals in China identify the historical period of the European Enlightenment as crucial in attempting any revaluation of a contemporary historicised China. Wang illustrates this: There are also many scholars who discuss the methodological problem of particularism and universalism, and, as far as I am concerned, we should of course take into account the particularity of a given historical period or society as the object of our research; and we especially need to critique Western universalism. Philosophically speaking, however, neither concept is viable, because, as we know, all narratives of ‘particularism’ are universal particularism, while all the narratives of ‘universalism’ are particular universalism. These two narratives appear to be diametrically opposed, but are actually interdependent. To a certain extent what we must work for is a ‘singular’, or singularistic, universalism. Within this framework of singular universalism, the pursuit of singularity is not merely a return to particularism, but rather, is to reveal the universal implications of the singularity, and to ask how and under what conditions such singularity can be translated in to universality. (2011: 88)

Conclusion How do we approach transition – a society in change as its ‘state’ – without imposing prior and ultimate stages that might misinform or misguide our approach? Thomassen argues that Jaspers’ proposal of an Axial Age offers a guide to understanding how crucial periods of transition are characterised by the breakdown of large-scale order. During such transitions, when social order becomes unfixed it therefore gives rise to changes in human experience and impetus to the development of new ideas, where traditional values fall away whilst new values are not yet in place. In seeking to establish such a historical causal event as more than mere conjecture, we need to establish some concept that can be utilised not only in one time and place but one that has applicability across human cultures and societies. At the crux of Axial Age theory is the concept of liminality, and ‘[i]f historical periods can be considered liminal, it follows that the crystallization of ideas and practice that take place during the period must be given special attention’ (Thomassen 2010: 334). These liminal ideas and practices inform the conditions for future human experience. If historical periods might be considered liminal, then what of contemporary times and places? The insight that the concept of permanent liminality affords deems it worthy of investigation to see whether or

China calling 21 not we might say China is in such a predicament. To do so one needs some indicators to identify social pathologies symptomatic of what Szakolczai (2009, 2014) outlines as permanent liminality, and this is the context for the chapters to follow: investigating how everyday phenomena may indicate a China at a threshold. But there is an important moment in Chinese history that from every angle appears to fulfil all the criteria of a liminal event. So next we explore the concept of liminality in more detail and then examine it with reference to a specific historical event, the so-called Democracy Wall in Beijing, 1978.

Note 1 Such as the relationship between steam and pressure for mechanical purposes; the knowledge was seen at work but never systemically employed across varied functions.

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M., 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: Texas University Press. Barrow, J., 1804. Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies. Boland, T., 2014. Critique Is a Thing of This World: Towards a Genealogy of Critique. History of the Human Sciences, 27(1), 108–123. Chevalier, M., 2012. L’Europe et la Chine, el’Occident et L’Orient. Charleston, South Carolina: Nabu Press. Cordier, H., 1872. A Catalogue of the Library of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Including the Library of Alex. Wylie, Esq.): Systematically Classed. Shanghai: Printed at the “Ching-Foong” General Printing Office. Cuffe, J., 2013. An Unfolding Story of Histories Devouring Histories. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(3), 153–162. Davis, J. F., 1840. The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants. London: Charles Knight & Co., Ludgate Street. Eisenstadt, S. N., 2000. Multiple Modernities. Daedalus, 129(1), 1–29. Foucault, M., & Rabinow, P., 1984. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon Books. Fukuyama, F., 1989. The End of History? The National Interest, (16), 3–18. Graeber, D., 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Handler, R., 2004. Afterword: Mysteries of Culture. American Anthropologist, 106(3), 488–494. Horvath, A., 2008. What Kind of Political Anthropology? Turning Iconoclasm into the Golden Age. International Political Anthropology, 1(2), 255–261. Kant, I., 1784. Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? In: Gedike, F. & Biester, J. E., eds. Berlinische Monatsschrift. Berlin: Haude and Spener, 481–494. Liang, H., 2016. Chinese Anthropology and Its Domestication Projects: De-Westernisation, Bentuhua and Overseas Ethnography. Social Anthropology, 24(4), 462–475. Lindstrom, L., 2013. Postmodernism. In: Carrier, J. G. & Gewertz, D. B., eds. The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology. London: Berg, 66–87.

22 China calling Meng, B., 2009. Who Needs Democracy If We Can Pick Our Favorite Girl? Super Girl as Media Spectacle. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2(3), 257–272. Needham, J., 1954. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 1: Introductory Orientations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Dubhghaill, S., 2014. Europe Is Not a Place: Recovering Memory in a Non-Lieu de Memoire. Irish Journal of Anthropology, 17(1), 6–12. Perry, E. J., 1994. Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations. China Quarterly, 139(139), 704–713. Polanyi, K., & Maclver, R. M., 1957. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press. Reich, R. B., 2009. How Capitalism Is Killing Democracy [online]. Foreign Policy. Available from: www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/08/15/how_capitalism_is_killing_ democracy [Accessed 1st June 2019]. Said, E., 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sivin, N., 1982. Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China: Or Didn’t It? Chinese Science, 5, 45–66. Staunten, G., 1799. An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China: Including Cursory Observations Made, and Information Obtained, in Travelling through That Ancient Empire and a Small Part of Chinese Tartary. Philadelphia: Printed for R. Campbell by J. Bioren. Szakolczai, A., 2009. Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events. International Political Anthropology, 2(1), 141–172. Szakolczai, A., 2014. Living Permanent Liminality: The Recent Transition Experience in Ireland. Irish Journal of Sociology, 22(1), 28–50. Thomassen, B., 2010. Anthropology, Multiple Modernities and the Axial Age Debate. Anthropological Theory, 10(4), 321–342. Wagner, P., 2012. Modernity: Understanding the Present. Cambridge: Polity. Wang, H., 2011. The Politics of Imagining Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wang, H., 2015. The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought. 3rd ed. Hong Kong: SDX Joint Publishing Company. Weber, M., Parsons, T., & Giddens, A., 1976. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Zhang, X., 2011. Enlightenment and the Dialectic of Particular and Universal: Toward A Cultural Political Notion of Modern Identity Formation. In: Nakajima, T., Zhang, X., & Jiang, H., eds. Rethinking Enlightenment in Global and Historical Contexts (UTCP Booklet No. 21/ICCT Series 1). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Centre for Philosophy, 11–28. Zhao, Y., 2008. Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Zheng, Y., 2010. The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction and Transformation. London: Routledge.

2

China at a threshold

Introduction In this chapter we introduce and explore the concept of permanent liminality, how it develops from early work on the structuring of experience through ritual and the argument for its new application to large-scale societies. We then examine a historical event as a threshold moment for the nation of China. Looking at the events around Xidan Street in Beijing in 1978, we see an event that holds all the characteristics of being a liminal moment. The contention is that in this period we see the failure of China to properly emerge from the liminal experiences of the Cultural Revolution, and while the events of later years of the 1970s held great promise, given the lack of suitable guides, after a such a tumultuous period the search for order actually seeks to make the current liminal conditions permanent rather than stepping forth into a new social world. Under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping, stability and order were indeed found through the institutionalisation of revolutionary practices with progressive goals ushering a continuation into permanent liminality in China. First, we introduce van Gennep’s concept of liminality before turning to Szakolczai’s insightful extension of the paradigm with the idea of permanent liminality.

Permanent liminality Van Gennep’s insight into the universal application of the tripartite structure of social rituals provides us with a useful lens for contemporary events. The concept of liminality, introduced by van Gennep (1909), refers to the ambiguity at play in the middle stage of the tripartite structure of rituals wherein a participant has left their old identity behind (separation) but has not yet taken on a new social identity (reaggregation). Thomassen defines liminality as ‘something very simple and universal: the experience of finding oneself at a boundary or in an in-between position, either spatially or temporally’ (2015: 40), and this simplicity, he explains, can sometimes be lost when we think of liminality as a technical term; rather, it is an innate characteristic of human experience. The novelty of the approach can be expressed as follows: The point of departure for van Gennep’s approach was constituted by real human experiences, ‘living facts’, and moments of transition, in contrast to

24 China at a threshold Durkheim’s social facts, which became ‘facts’ exactly to the extent that they were external to the individual. These two very different points of departure have very different potential ramifications. (Thomassen 2009: 2) Originally conceived from studies on small-scale traditional societies examining such cultural practices as initiation rites, the liminal stage is central to incorporating a new status and sense of self and offers the participant time and space to reflect and accommodate the changes that are taking place. During the liminal phase of a ritual the participant is intensely aware of oneself but also as part of a larger whole. The individual is stripped of anything that demarcates them from a larger group. Ritual subjects in these rites undergo a ‘leveling’ process, in which signs of their preliminal statues are destroyed and signs of their liminal non-states are applied. . . . In mid-transition the initiands are pushed as far toward uniformity, structural invisibility, and anonymity as possible. By way of compensation, the initiands acquire a special kind of freedom, a ‘sacred power’ of the meek, weak, and humble. (Turner 1974: 59) Popularised by Turner, the term liminal and liminality has gained wider application and can be used to reference both (artificial) ritualistic threshold moments as well as ‘natural’ threshold experiences incurred by environmental disaster, war or illness, for example. As well as applying to small-scale societies at the level of individual and group, Szakolczai argues that van Gennep’s liminality has purchase outside of its narrow and specialised application to local-level tribal rituals and should be considered as a general concept alongside other social science concepts such as structure and order, allowing us to move away from a binary model and towards a processual framework (Szakolczai 2000: 210). Essentially the liminal period, regardless of scale, is associated with a lack of structure that can be both destructive and creative. The importance of studying liminal moments lies in identifying the seeds of what is to come after, those periods of social history that lay the foundations for what is to follow; ideas that arise during liminal moments can structure life following liminality. In a ritual setting an experienced master of ceremonies (an elite member of society) guides participants through the liminal period; however, in larger-scale societies it is unclear whether there can be an appropriate elite to facilitate transition. Due to lack of guidance and prior transition-experience, transitions can be hijacked, leading to potentially dangerous situations where society weaves damaging ideas and ill-thought-out practices into a new social fabric. Thus, liminality can be used to account for large-scale societies undergoing a crisis where worldviews are dramatically changed (Thomassen 2009). István Bibó argued that the presence of an elite guide requires two things: an established social consensus behind the process of selection for elite members and the proper positioning of

China at a threshold 25 such elite members within society (quoted in Szakolczai 1998). How does society move on from a threshold moment when the new phase is not clearly laid out? This is a chief concern for Szakolczai, who argues that current Western society has failed to properly exit a transition and is now in a state of permanent liminality (2001). For Szakolczai, applying the term liminal to full-scale societies (not just smallscale social ritual) means to understand liminality as a search for order, to seek an order that has been lost in everyday life. Liminal events at the scale of society may be accidental or may actually be instigated, and we do not need to look hard for evidence for such political machinations in China with the collapse of social order during the formally titled Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (无产阶级 文化大革命 Wúchǎn Jiējí Wénhuà Dàgémìng), instigated by Mao to shore up his authority and ideological legitimacy. The dangers of wide-scale destabilisation – as evidenced in the Cultural Revolution – is that all legitimate and illegitimate structures can be consumed by critique and actual violence. When all around falls, Szakolczai argues that ‘the effective long-term solution to large-scale real-world liminal situations is to make such liminal conditions permanent. This would insulate social “order”, in a paradoxical but apparently effective way, against further possibilities of a liminal crisis’ (Szakolczai 2000: 211). Indeed, it is the liminal crisis of the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath that sets the backdrop to Deng’s economic reforms and the transition to a social market economy. The China in transition that faces academics today is a de facto example of Szakolczai’s permanent liminality. To fully illustrate how the social actors and events tracing the Cultural Revolution lapse into permanent liminality will be the task of historians to come, as this vocabulary is comparatively recent (see also Horvarth’s Modernism and Charisma, 2013). But we can start here with a targeted example; Szakolczai’s proposal for the concept of permanent liminality provides real understanding to the events as they have unfolded in the Chinese case. At the local small-scale ritual there are three stages – separation, liminal and reaggregation – and it is at any of these stages where the normal progression may become unfixed and permanent. During the reaggregation stage there is a time to prepare for finality, for realising order, the exit of searching for that order, but if such finality can never be realised, if the earthly paradise is more myth than future (see Meng 2009 and Chapter 1), we can discern the ever-striving, ever-changing, ever-chasing as defining characteristics of the resulting permanent liminality, not only in China; as Szakolczai argues, these are the defining features of modernity which – through the processes of globalisation and two world wars – have spread or are spreading to other world cultures and societies. Popular debate, then, on when China will gain political ‘freedoms’ as a result of economic reforms positions China as being in transition towards a preferred state. We can see from the afore-going that a perspective drawn from the permanent liminality framework allows us to position China differently, at a threshold moment, not yet realised but neither at some stage in a teleological framework; not subordinated to perceived economic or political stages in the development

26 China at a threshold of a universal history. China at a threshold is itself a response to the inability to achieve and realise the ambitions of transition from a tumultuous and catastrophic collapse of social order. We can trace the emergence to a seminal moment at the end of the Cultural Revolution; the events and political machinations that unfolded at the so-called Democracy Wall stabilised the authority of Deng, who in turn prematurely finished the public discourse around what kind of China the Chinese wanted. It is worth exploring this event to see how the permanent liminality framework helps make sense of one of the most fraught times in Chinese political history, which, further, never resolved the revolutionary crisis but maintained the conditions that were inherited for fear of any return to the destabilising and literally terrorizing effects of the revolution.

The Democracy Wall as a threshold event At the outset it is beneficial to note some of the geographical or spatial attributes of the area of Xidan (西单Xīdān) and suggest why it was here and not elsewhere that the ‘Democracy Wall’ came to exist. At the intersection of West Chang’an Avenue and North Xidan Street in the commercial area of Xicheng District, there is a long brick wall that came to be a focal point for activists and a visual manifestation of the period known as Beijing Spring (北京之春Běijīng zhī chūn) in the late 1970s. This period saw greater liberalisation by the government in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution; political and social commentaries were posted on the wall during 1978/79, with people tacitly allowed to openly criticise the actions of the government and of officials for actions committed during the Cultural Revolution. Xidan Street is served by Line 1 of the Beijing Metro System; although this line was completed in 1969, it underwent constant problems over the following decade, being closed regularly between 1971 and 1975 for military and political reasons. Being the first subway line in Beijing, the line was constructed to serve primary strategic interests including the Beijing Railway station, government offices and a military base near Western Hills, not to mention the commercial area of Xicheng district. This district has historically served as a marketplace since the Ming Dynasty, with traders arriving into Beijing city proper passing along this route, as is reflected in the now rebuilt gateway (牌坊páifāng) or that would demarcate city boundaries/designations in the manner of precincts. To this day, Xidan Street is known primarily as a shopping district, one of three main shopping districts in Beijing. The wall at Xidan thus stood in an area that is and has been frequented by travellers and consumers over the ages. It lies at a point where the government and military are connected by a passing subway line in conjunction with a busy bus station over ground that integrates the wider city, and in this sense the wall is not remote nor isolated; the Democracy Wall had a ready and available audience once the event came into being. Indeed, before the appearance of political expressions on the wall in the form of Big Character Posters (大字报dàzìbào), the wall served as a kind of ‘bulletin wall’ for more mundane topics such as displaying local and national news items. So the wall as a space and place for the dissemination of information already

China at a threshold 27 existed before the spectacle of the Democracy Wall took place. Some commentators such as Merle Goldman (1994) note that the Democracy Wall appears to have begun somewhat spontaneously, and while any essential intentionality may be hard to trace in its occurrence, we can see from this description that it was already a primed location for this event. There is also suspicion that calling the event spontaneous overlooks the fact it really only started to take off after a leaked document from the Third Plenum of a Central Committee discussed reversing the unpopular verdict of the Tiananmen 1976 Incident as counter-revolutionary. The political climate after the Cultural Revolution was tense, and the ruling class had been filled with radicals and beneficiaries of the preceding crisis. Mao and the party struggled for clear leaders to whom they could turn for the future. Mao’s chosen successor, Lin Biao, was killed in a plane crash, Mao himself died soon after, with his heir apparent in the form of a politically weak Hua Guo and his remarkably named ‘whateverist’ policies (两个凡是 Liǎng Gè Fánshì) that aimed to continue ‘unswervingly’ with Mao’s doctrine. The death of one of the few moderates, the extremely capable Zhou Enlai, from cancer and the speedy political rehabilitation of Deng took many off-guard, and the political machinations of the so-called Gang of Four (四人帮 Sì Rén Bāng), led by Mao’s fourth wife, an actress and leftist radical, caused further instability. We can most certainly identify Jiang Qing as a typical trickster of the anthropological canon, an opportunist who went by many names, politically ambitious but with no real substance, thriving on crisis, including political machinations to capitalise on the death of her husband. Against this political climate the event of the Democracy Wall emerged in 1978. The following decade of the 1980s would become known as Chinese Cultural Fever (文化热 Wénhuà Rè) owing to the intense questioning of politics/culture and society that took place in China during this time As many Marxist ideologues would remind us, the seeds of modern consciousness were sown as early as 1978, when the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Party Congress launched the campaign of ‘thought emancipation’ and initiated the agenda of modernization. (Wang 1996: 139) These seeds were in fact being sown at Xidan Street, which we can characterise as a liminal event that shone a light on key actors and factions fighting for the spirit and heart of China. The Democracy Wall is strongly associated with the Democracy Movement, which has origins in the 1976 protests at Tiananmen Square. In the West, the Democracy Wall has come to stand as a symbol of the desire for liberal democracy by the people of China under an oppressive regime and as a precursor to the extraordinary events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square. The emergence of the Democracy Wall suggested to some commentators that China had developed a dissident movement of its own and was following the path of Eastern European countries. However, there were many different political offerings at the wall, including philosophical offerings, and many theories and concepts were confused

28 China at a threshold and mingled together in ways not possible in the West and consequently misunderstood by Western media. The Democracy Wall itself was not just a phenomenon that occurred in Beijing; it was one small part of a wider social happening, one event of many similar events in different locations at the same time, evident in other cities such as Guangzhou and Qinghai, too, yet not distinctly a cohesive movement, rather, more simultaneous responses to the prevailing social and political contexts. Therefore, it was not a one-off unique event but a manifestation of the wider liminal conditions of China. Some initial posters (dàzìbào) were placed by government officials (government buildings are located nearby) declaring how communism was the best system of governance and only needed some changes to be implemented, i.e. The Four Modernisations. Dàzìbào are wall-mounted posters displaying a number of characters (generally handwritten) with a message, and as a form/medium have been popular since imperial times for protest and communication. With increased literacy rates1 since the arrival of Communist China, the effectiveness of Big Character Posters was greatly increased in comparison to dynastic times. The large pedestrian traffic did not go unnoticed by poets, artists and writers, either, who would sell their wares from the wall, and as this creative industry established itself at the site of Xidan wall, people soon came to post their own dàzìbào. The combination of increased literacy, facilitative location of the wall and actual inception of the Democracy Wall as a liminal space can be highlighted by referring to the Guizhou group ‘Enlightenment Society’ that travelled to Xidan Street a total of six times in autumn 1978 to display dàzìbào and distribute their magazine Enlightenment. From Guiyang in Guizhou to Beijing city is, in comparative terms, farther than the distance between London and Rome. Awareness of the Democracy Wall became widespread, and it was the focal point for loose networks of individuals and organisation over wider China. The wall even became known outside of China through international media coverage, with some dàzìbào calling for attention from foreign leaders, foreign events and movements. Being near major transport routes helped immensely, as did being in an ancient commercial area that attracted people anyway. Wei Jingsheng, the author of the “Fifth Modernisation”, writes of how 300 people were at the wall when he went to post his own writing, even though it was midnight: ‘[T]here was a kind of magnetic energy that transformed the place from a transit point to a vital source of information’ (Wei 1999). The wall ceases being a passageway and becomes a destination in and of itself. Of the people who took part in the Democracy Wall Movement, many were former Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution. The methods of communication such as distribution of pamphlets and use of dàzìbào were the same methods by which the Red Guards disseminated their thoughts and attacks on the Party and intellectuals. The suppression of the Red Guard at the end of the Cultural Revolution saw the elite party officials, once protectors of the Red Guards, sacrifice them in order to preserve their own authority and power. The abandonment of the Red Guard by the elite came to the fore in an event preceding the Democracy Wall, referred to as the Tiananmen Incident, in 1976. Brødsgaard writes that the

China at a threshold 29 events in 1976, subsequently known as the April 5th Movement (四五运动 Sìwǔ Yùndòng), became a symbolic marker of the general aspirations for liberalisation. It was the ‘opening salvo of China’s Democracy Movement’ (1981) and only from this can one understand the events of the Democracy Wall. The relational breakdown between these factions was also a topic for writings of the Democracy Wall movement. Networks arose haphazardly and informally amongst the disparate groups of the late 1970s. Novel, from the standards of the Cultural Revolution, was the solidarity amongst these groups when individual members were arrested, such as Fu Yuehua2 (Goldman 1999). She was the first activist to be arrested, in January 1979, and her arrest was advertised on the Democracy Wall. Her family, aided by other Democracy Wall groups, called for the protection of her legal rights, her release and her fair treatment. During the Cultural Revolution, such solidarity could lead to immediate danger to those standing with the accused. The other main group to take part in the Democracy Wall Movement were the activists who had been arrested during the 1976 April Tiananmen Incident, whose political identity came to be forged during their internment until their rehabilitation. Another quality of the Democracy Wall Spectacle is that of ‘Hope’ or ‘Aspiration’. The intention behind any of the actions at the Wall was that of desire for change, and this is something more fundamental than the desire for democracy or any equivalent aspiration. There was belief in betterment for the future, the manifest desire to take action towards a better future. Coming out of the bleak atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution was a reawakening for many to new possibilities; despite the widespread indoctrination of the Chinese population, destruction of so many indigenous works of philosophy/art and sweeping away of foreign intrusions, it cannot be said that China became isolated or stagnant. With universities closed, intellectuals turned to the translation of foreign texts as a means of communicating ideas and theories in a time when the youth were sent ‘Down to the Countryside’ (上山下乡运动 Shàngshān Xiàxiāng Yùndòng) for their education. At the Democracy Wall, the sentiment of mínzhǔ3 (民主) proposed that, given the freedom to exercise political rights, the array of different interests would converge towards a common good (Guang 1996: 436). The most radical proponent of an individualistic democracy was Wei Jingsheng, who, in his “Fifth Modernisation”, called for defence of such political rights of the individual and protection of those rights from the state; in essence, carving out a niche of political power for the individual that would exist apart from the state, yet the underlying sentiment remained that once such rights were guaranteed, those rights and interests would harmoniously lead to national prosperity and towards the Four Modernisations. There is no small element of the Confucian conception for a harmonious society here, mingled in with Marxist connotations of class consciousness. Even the political self-awareness of those speaking through the underground journals at the Democracy Wall is one of being the ‘vanguard of and for the people’ in correcting the trajectory of a ‘backward’ China towards the ‘correct line’ (Fa kan ci 1979: 276 and ‘irresistible trend of history’ (Fa kan shengming

30 China at a threshold 1979: 1). Such a perspective during this era is synonymous with the Communist Party of China’s task of portraying communism as ‘the inevitable and glorious outcome of a discernible historical purpose’ (Watson 1994: 1). Progressive history coincides with socialist democracy as the culmination of social and material conditions of history, which we identify here as permanent liminality, the never realised myth of arrival. Many Western analyses of the Democracy Movement within China describe the role of activists as dissidents,4 justified under Western goals of democratic ideals, and such justification slides by unnoticed, especially from the vantage point of the democratic West. In fact, the activists themselves responded admonishingly to the label of ‘dissidents’ by foreign media. In one example referred to by Paltemaa (2005), Siwu luntan, a journal that regularly countered Western assumptions of events, responded to the Baltimore Sun’s usage of the term dissidents: We are not dissidents. We struggle for communism that realized elimination of exploitation, oppression, inequality and freedom for all. We do this under the guidance of Marxism, to establish democratic socialism, legality and a modernised strong and prosperous country. (Zonghe xiaoxi 1980: 31) It is therefore sensible to not call the participants of the Democracy Wall Movement dissidents but instead to refer to them as remonstrators; this is to say that participants acted in ‘loyal opposition’ to the party. Remonstration was a traditional act in China where a subject might remonstrate with the Emperor in the face of an unwise decision being made, but obedience to the Emperor was not in question. The majority of Democracy Wall participants may be considered remonstrators and not actively opposing or denouncing the ruling party or system. As Brødsgaard points out, voicing protest or criticism depends on higher political support – remonstrators gain legitimacy from the inside rather than from the breadth of their support from the outside (as with Western petitioners). That the Democracy Wall event took place where it did, considering the geographical description at the start, we can see that as a throughway, it was in a sense ‘open’ (if not exactly public) to the people who were passing between locations, between destinations that were open to some yet closed to others. So this particular location was liminal, between those other spaces that are governed by social and political rules and norms. An example of this demarcation of the city in terms of spatial ordering is the early use of the Beijing Metro Line 1. Although anyone might use the metro by simply paying the fee (in the very first days of opening, this was not the case), certain stops could only be used by those workers entitled to disembark at such and such a location. The avenue of Xidan Street is similar in that it connected important locations of Beijing (Tiananmen Square/Zhongnanhai/ Forbidden City are all off Chang’an Avenue and Wenjin Street, which both connect to Xidan Street on the south and the north, respectively) and as a passageway anyone could travel along, even if certain locations or destinations are forbidden. This is an important element in understanding the Democracy Wall; it was a

China at a threshold 31 liminal zone that in turn fostered the open discussions for what path China should finally take. At the Democracy Wall, there was a conscious disinterest in social status amongst the activists and an acceptance of an inherent common good towards which all should work. An example of these attributes can be seen in what Paltemaa argues exemplifies a code of conduct in refusing to identify and personify individuals over others. In one case a named correspondent was praised for his work towards democracy during the Democracy Wall event: A response from a reader showed how such a praise of a free member of the Democracy Movement was seen as a breach in the unwritten rules. The writer stated that praise for Xia Xunjiang in the journal had not been a very good idea, as the Chinese had heard enough of individuals being praised. (Paltemaa 2005: 462) The reference to free members of the Democracy Movement refers to the acceptable mentioning of individuals if they have been arrested and imprisoned by the authorities. Paltemaa notes that the political centre demands monopoly over the power to define symbols . . . and labels of identities are an essential part of this. . . . Identity labels become arguments in themselves demanding certain kinds of attitudes and behaviour from the people using them and those they are used upon. They are shorthand for longer arguments of what, why, on what grounds, and by whom. (Paltemaa 2005: 462) The participants in the Democracy movement refrained from ‘putting hats’ on themselves other than in a collective manner; they did however place hats on party cadres – whether such and such an individual was a good or even an exemplary cadre – e.g. Deng, or whether a party member was a bad cadre like those of the Gang of Four. This populist naming of political figures was problematic for Deng once he had consolidated power, as it meant his actions were being judged outside of his political sphere of influence (if the practice was allowed to continue). This was the radical individualisation for which Wei Jingsheng argued in his “Fifth Modernisation”, calling for the protection of individual rights from and against the party. Such a move would carve out political niches immune to party control and therefore were an affront to the entire political system of the CCP seeking to prevent any return to the instability of the past and to maintain the status quo in striving for a socialist future. Wei was summarily imprisoned after the posting of his “Fifth Modernisation”. Wei’s demand was for a private life protected from the public scrutiny of the party. Wei was however, in the extreme (as discussions went) about democracy, with journals ranging from revisionist (amending the existing system to institutionalise a socialist democracy) to abolitionist (scrapping the current system in favour of building anew a Marxist socialist democracy). The larger number of activists and participants opined that once certain ‘democratic’

32 China at a threshold freedoms were in place, then individuals could and would politically cooperate towards a common good. Despite the possibility of looking at the Democracy Wall as a public sphere or as a public space, it is better characterised as a liminal event (both in space and time) where the collective were very consciously working out what such a space might be (how it would work) and what it could do (for the party and for the state – largely synonymous in China). This working out was done within the setting and discourse of predominantly Marxist thought, with Confucian elements (i.e. a dialectical process towards a harmonious society). In the Democracy Wall we see exactly a liminal moment, a seeking for order, and with all the random, spontaneous and strategizing politically and otherwise that occurred, the evident absence of a master of ceremonies in those particular years brought about a state of permanent liminality, one we are familiar with in the West: the institutionalisation of the tenets of the enlightenment project As much as the mid-1980s were moving toward a visionary perfection of the twin projects of modernization and enlightenment, they also witnessed a continual sequence of sociocultural and economic spectacles that cast shadows over the social psychology of a people dreaming of an attainable utopian future. In 1987, signs of setback were already obvious. What was at stake was not only the elite’s agenda of enlightenment, but also the vision of a yet to be consummated project of socialist modernization. Contrary to the public’s great expectations, the Thirteenth Party Congress held in October delivered an official statement that China was still lingering at the ‘primary stage of socialism.’ Premier Zhao Ziyang’s anticlimactic declaration at the Party Congress not only sharpened the sense of crisis that a failing urban reform had already engendered, but also demoralized the nation’s utopian dreamers and plunged them into an inverse dystopian mood. (Wang 1996: 37) Of course, since Wang’s publication, China has seen immense economic growth and has lifted more people out of poverty than any other civilisation on record. Yet the style of economic growth and the development of new social trends and cultural norms wreak havoc underneath the façade of a growing middle class satiated with plentiful goods and broadened horizons. The middle class are increasingly aware, too – environmental damage, demographic problems, growing health concerns, including reproductivity across Eastern China. At the personal level, the difficulties in finding partners (for both sexes), for expressing gendered identities openly (LGBQ+), managing thoughts and processing information that conflicts with experience or education. There are contradictions at the heart of Chinese society that, given their scale, are increasingly difficult to ignore both within and from outside China. It is important to note that these contradictions are not unique to China; simply, China happens to be the focus of discussion in this title. See Szakolczai on Ireland (2014) and, in this series, Silla on America (2018) and Isaloo on Iran (2018).

China at a threshold 33

China at a threshold The modern predicament is paradoxical, and at its heart is a striving for progress based on increasing technological complexity. Technology responds to our inescapable desire to do more, faster, more efficiently. The development of technological capacity and ability in the West is premised on the establishment of free communication and free markets; while there is little scholarly agreement on whether China needs to follow this path such debates perpetuate the China-inTransition motif. There is a tendency to believe that there is a liberative quality inherent in information and communications technology and that increasing technological complexity is a positive force for destabilising authoritarian regimes. Scholars such as Shirk (2011) and Diamond (2010) see technological development as a companion to economic liberalisation, which in turn will lead to political reforms in China or, by extension, any authoritarian state. This libertarian perspective argues that the increasing complexity of communications technology will destabilise the political authority over knowledge and information, leading to a radical social change that in turn fosters an environment for more plural political representation to occur. Alternatively, a counter-argument exists that increased technological complexity will only reinforce the powers of social control of authoritarian regimes. This pessimistic or dystopian perspective argues that such technological progress will therefore limit any scope for future political plurality, let alone democracy, and reinforce the power of a technocratic elite. Our understanding of how technology effects social change informs the debate on where China will go in the future, but our understanding of how technology works as a social force is extremely limited. The relationship between social forces requires a much closer ethnographic treatment, and even prior to such research we need to gain a better appreciation of technology as a social force in its own right rather than as an implicit progressive force in the relationship between economics, politics and institutional coercion. Technology is not merely a neutral tool which facilitates social development and only becomes problematic when unpredictable human behaviour engages with it. Social development is not simply an equation derived from innovating technology plus human behaviour. On the technical side, the impact of technological development appears to be one of democratisation. Technology democratises communication. By this it is meant that technology ‘averages’ out communication, good and bad voices gaining equal access. Technology thus does not increase the quality of discourse; rather, it obfuscates it by increasing availability, as opposed to the more generally held idea that more discourse generates greater quality in deliberation. However, more voices do not compensate for better voices, and improved technology does not equate with improved judgement. Technology fragments the presence of good voices; bad voices are raised to the level of good voices and can obfuscate them. In an everyday example, we can think of writing. Literacy allows for replication of thought on the page. It allows for everyone’s thoughts to be replicated on the page, whether they are good thoughts or bad thoughts. These pages can be copied by scribes or by photocopiers and given greater circulation regardless of the

34 China at a threshold quality of thought. Technology does facilitate greater communication in the sense of magnitude, but by fragmentation; initial context is no longer bound to those thoughts, and their replication facilitates greater play in interpretation, but the further removed communication becomes from its originating contexts the greater interpretation can stray from meaningful correspondence. This is not inherently a danger, as we are not trying to retrieve a historical truth – this is impossible – but we are trying to account for being-in-the-world. Any evaluation of the discourse that has been written comes subsequent to the technological facilitation of it, not because of it; that is to say, greater communication does not inherently mean better evaluation. Technology in and of itself does not aid the evaluation of a text but hinders it by its ability to replicate mediocrity due to its democratising nature; the problem would appear to lie in identifying vacuous images as substantial and as a result losing some sense of where one is. We cannot ignore the impact such inventions as the printing press have had on democratising knowledge, and it would be naive to argue that this has not had a beneficial effect on society. I am not seeking to dispute this, but it is this theme that I am seeking to explore: What can we say of the role of such techno-social forces? Apart from those who feel that technology has a liberating capacity and advances social life, there is the opposing camp that can be referred to as technological determinists or pessimists who argue that, far from liberating, technology erases some essence of social life or that it dis-empowers individuals rather than empowering them. This dis-empowerment could be by removing necessary technical know-how from ‘ordinary’ persons to a technological elite or oligarchy that can control it, or by removing some experiential attribute of everyday social life. Nevertheless, common to both perspectives (technological libertarians and pessimists) is the ideology of progress, and that over the longer term distinct social changes will be seen to gravitate towards either a utopian or dystopian ideal, as envisaged by the respective camps. Both perspectives, in their presupposition of ‘progress’, are consequently adjudicating progress as a good or bad thing, whether the argument is over the direction society is taking (i.e. progressing or regressing) or the argument is on technological progress itself as a benevolence to social development. Different debates focus on different ideas of progress, be it technological progress, social progress, political progress etc., and due care must be given to ensure which aspect of progress is under discussion. Here the focus is on the all-encompassing Progress of progresses by which we measure ourselves and society in history. At all times, arguments are normative and prescriptive and evaluate action in terms of a perceived end goal; that is to say that the arguments are teleological. Teleological arguments explain actions in terms of an end or final cause. Progress, as an ideology, sees that technological progress (increasing complexity) causally relates with social advancement (normative judgement relating desired outcome with current action). This refers us back to Nisbet’s five features of progress that we can (through application of reason and fruits of technological development) make society in our own image and strive towards (and ultimately achieve) a utopian ideal for society. Even science has abandoned teleological arguments as

China at a threshold 35 unsound methods of explaining events in the natural world (the Aristotelian Final Cause), so it would appear we should abandon them in the humanities, where events occur in a much more unstable laboratory. This leaves open the question that if technological progress and social change are not correlated positively or negatively, then what is the relationship between them? And implicit in this question is if society is not developing in a linear trajectory, as commonly understood, than how might it be changing in time? Progress pervades the contemporary world with investment in the calculability of progress or measurement of development in our increasingly complex societies. By the primacy of abstraction, we gain legitimacy and accountability by rationality and numbers. The idea of ‘quality of life’ is very important to us in modern times, where such quality is measured by living standards, life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy and so on. Certainly, such measurements are indicative only, but the sight of this is often lost when comparisons take place between places and times; such comparisons always make a value judgement and often can be politically motivated, if only implicitly. Such activities lead to activities that phenomenologist John O’Neil described as numbers draining the meaning out of life.

Conclusion The Western perspective on China as being in transition is problematic, running the risk of base orientalism. The question Why is China not Europe, or the US for that matter, imposes a transitionary status on China with the impression she will fulfil expectations of arrival – after transition – at one state or another. We must ask about this gaze that sees China in transition. Are we at risk of orientalism vis a vis Said? Whence does our gaze arise? From a consumer-driven society captured by the promises of technology: peace, equality and development (Gehlen 2003: 217). Jonas writes eloquently on the dynamic nature of modern technology, arguing that ‘in addition to spawning new ends (worthy or frivolous) from the mere invention of means . . . [technology] establish[es] itself as the transcendent end’ (1979: 38). The age we now live in and the symbiotic relationship between science and technology provides a ‘complete’ picture of our world: ‘the progress of probing makes the object grow richer in modes of operation. . . . And instead of narrowing the margin of the still-undiscovered, science now surprises itself with unlocking dimension after dimension of new depths’ (1979: 37). The body is opened up for study by a mind armed with limitless ideas of self-improvement according to the ever-increasing array of means at our disposal. This is a paradoxical situation for certain. Jonas argues that this sense of limitlessness to technological innovation and scientific exploration, experienced as progress, offers the mind the cognitive impulse to continue unabated in a cyclical process of immanent abandon. This clear description of contemporary Western society is fertile grounding for the concept of permanent liminality that Szakolczai offers us. Contemporary technology stands out as a particular feature of modernity which, through human impulse, generates its own new means, means which are equivalent in their attraction to humans as ends.

36 China at a threshold From within our ‘progressive’ society, those nations that can be characterised as ‘non-progressive’ (non-liberal, unequal and unfree) will appear as behind, underdeveloped and therefore in need of catching up, making a great leap forward, so to speak; such transitioning is of a particular normative type – catching up to us. Official Chinese narratives even adopt these themes, acknowledging that they need to catch up economically before they can fully adopt social equality or civil rights etc. But our gaze arises from a very peculiar moment in history; are we in the midst of permanent liminality, and if so, what markers can help distinguish this and what insights do they allow? And lastly, regarding the aim of this work – what can we say of the role of technology in social change?

Notes 1 Literacy rates increased substantially under Mao Zedong. 2 Fu was a local Beijinger who filed a complaint against rape, which resulted in her being sacked from her work unit. She was one of the leaders of a peasant demonstration against ‘hunger and oppression’ in Beijing on January 8 and was arrested by plainclothes police ten days later. 3 Translates as democracy but held an earlier elasticity in meaning compared to the Western accepted intonations of liberal individual democratic equality. 4 For discussions on this see: Kelliher (1993), Perry and Selden (2003), and Pei (2003).

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3

Approaching technology

Introduction Definitions of ‘technology’ are highly contested to the point that we might question how useful the word is; nonetheless, some phenomena signified with this term have gained wide purchase across globalised cultures in both academic and popular usage. Therefore, while defining technology is difficult, the social fact of its wide variety of uses and applications cannot be ignored. For example, the understanding of technology in everyday usage is something of an artificial construct. Practical understandings of the term frequently involve machines and tools and how they bring about human desires and intentions, often with a focus on how these practices can be improved or be made more efficient. In more philosophical terms, technology can equally refer to social processes, such as mass education or mass labour (e.g. the megamachine Mumford (2010)). Meanwhile, in relation to communications technology, we might say that although communication and technology are inherently not the same thing, the relationship between such phenomena is far from clear, for example musical instruments, where the whole is more than its parts. This last point is particularly interesting from an anthropological point of view, in which the task is to reflect on what it is to be human: in attempting to understand communications technology we have something human and something else, and we are uncertain as to how such phenomena coalesce. Technological innovation has a longer history than contemporary concerns of its intricate associations with governments and the military, industry and business, ideas of ‘public’ and ‘private’, individuals and groups. The use of technology (whatever we understand technology to be) has social dimensions and is so intertwined with communication and everyday life that we can refer to media as a techno-social force. We must be aware of historical contexts and so too cultural contexts; as such, techno-social relations were always embedded in the practices of everyday life. In thinking on technology, there are some features that need highlighting: the implications of spatial and temporal effects technologies have on subject/s and their social place; the democratising effect of technology (and what this democratising actually means); what development means in relation to technology; or what a history of technology looks like and why. We urgently need to study techno-social forces for understanding contemporary everyday experiences; it will aid us in understanding the directions that social

Approaching technology 39 life may take in the future, but even if not, it should help us in at least identifying some of the problems we are currently facing. Furthermore, trying to understand the techno-social brings the politics of technology to the fore rather than allowing technology to remain embedded in the practices of everyday life deprived of ethical, social or political meaning. In particular, modern communications technology is pervasive and accepted to such a degree as to be almost inconspicuous, hidden away from public scrutiny and accountability. As Borgmann writes: Concrete, everyday life is always and, it seems, rightly taken for granted. It is the common and obvious foreground of our lives that is understood by everyone. Therefore it is almost systematically and universally skipped in philosophical and social analysis. But if the determining pattern of our lives resides and sustains itself primarily in the inconspicuous setting of our daily surroundings and activities, then the decisive force of our time inevitably escapes scrutiny and criticism. (1984: 3) Addressing such a lack of scrutiny is important, as changes in our society are occurring on this minute level: how we communicate with each other, how we pay for things, how we eat and so on. If changes that occur in the mundane go uninspected, then changes in how we relate to the world and how we relate to each other also remain unexamined. Jonas (1979) writes from a different perspective, arguing that while it is only in looking back that we can identify technological revolutions, contemporaneously, such revolutionary developments were often accidental and exceedingly slow in adoption. Technology embeds itself in our everyday lives, and such processes take time; the process of adoption occurs in the mundane of everyday. Should technology become more and more embedded and invisible within our day-to-day lives, then far from technology having a ‘liberating’ or ‘democratic’ effect on society, it will serve to embed and cloak structures of power, control, inequality and injustice. Galloway notes that there is a blurring of the boundaries between action and agency that ‘challenges traditional practice[s] of autonomy and social control, and makes responsibility and accountability increasingly difficult to locate’ (2004: 401). This is not to say that they are necessarily distinct but rather that it is increasingly difficult to recognise loci of responsibility, morality and intent. Embedded as they are within the practices of everyday life, technosocial relations form and reform our pre-existing social environment, as Heyer observes: The transformation of basic information into knowledge is not a disembodied process. It is powerfully influenced by the manner of its material expression. In other words, the medium is never neutral. How we organize and transmit the world strongly affects the nature of those perspectives and the way we come to know the world. (Crowley & Heyer 2011: xiv)

40 Approaching technology If we accept the contention that technology has social impact, and that communication is considered a central feature of social change, then how best can we understand the role of communications technology in social change? Is it progressive, developmental, linear, dialogical? Is it a symptom of human activity that generates its own favourable environment for the continuation of human activity (Dusek 2006: 215); are we constructing our own womb? In contemporary societies communication is intimately bound up with technology, something we traditionally (in Europe, at least) consider to be distinctly non-human, non-organic and non-reducible to communication. Yet communication as an inherently human activity appears to no longer be purely – or perhaps intimately – human. Examples range from establishing relations through dating applications, listening to digitally produced music, reading on the internet or taking directions from voice enabled satellite navigation systems. Each of these examples show technology operating as a mediator between humans or at the boundary between humans and the world, and this in-between-ness is a core concern in trying to understand the human experience and what Horvath (inspired by Plato) refers to as the unreal.1 ‘It is only the deviation from reality, its alteration, or the ‘unreal’, which can be put into words’ (Horvath & Szakolczai 2018: 1). While transitoriness and threshold points are widely understood as crucial categories, anthropology has been able to provide a theoretical framework for understanding change in human and social experience through the concept of liminality, and it is this concept that will help us understand communication technology and its role as mediator within and through human experience.

What is technology? Philosophical approaches Heidegger (1977) considers the understanding of technology to be primarily a philosophical concern, as it is a mode of revealing, of truth-telling of our relation to the world; and this philosophical concern has profound anthropological implications. This book draws upon both realms, the anthropological and the philosophical, in order to explore technology and communication. The examples utilised earlier underscore the pervasive nature of technology, particularly within the realm of the mundane. So, what, then, is technology? Is it one thing, or many? Is it simply a human activity, or something independent of human activity? And if we are cultural beings socialised from external conditions, products of our social ecology rather than agents of our own determining, then how might we gain any purchase on a phenomenon that derives from outside our own ontological nature? Scholars have distinguished various perspectives and definitions. Borgmann describes theories of technology as falling within three broad themes: substantivist, instrumentalist and pluralist. Substantive, or ‘sociological’, theories perceive technology as a force that acts on society, often negatively (1984: 9ff). The instrumental view, meanwhile, sees technology as an extension of a human propensity for tool-making, a Promethean activity. So whereas in the sociological viewpoint technology guides society and shapes values, the instrumentalist sees values as guiding the use of a neutral technology. This is the viewpoint that often

Approaching technology 41 perceives positive links between technology and democracy – wherein Western nations’ democratic values lead to technological development, which in turn aids in democratising non-democratic and typically non-Western societies. The third catch-all category Borgmann calls the pluralist position (1984: 11f). The pluralist adopts a contrarian approach; this perspective ignores ethnographic facts as they might appear on the ground in favour of explanatory ideas that can integrate contradictory theories or alternatively refute any possibility of integration due to ever narrowing yet verifiable empirical accounts. The pluralist position may well sound like rhetoric, but it also indicative of the poor capabilities in our efforts to understand technology through different paradigms or from different disciplines. Humans of course form an integral and essential part of any technological ecology, but if technology is understood only within a system manifested by humans, then context becomes overbearing and no general characterisations of the technological are possible. Technology will always appear specific and local and prevent any attempt to move past the specifics to address the evident universal implications of the technological, whether for environment, health, communication etc. Each of these approaches fail to account satisfactorily for the effects of technology as a socially and culturally embedded activity, and thus as a reflexive social force that both acts and reacts. Yang Guobin writes, A persistent problem in the study of media and technology is a deterministic view of technology. To say that the internet can ‘narrow and warp our beliefs’ or ‘Google is making Americans stupid’ or online anonymity is responsible for uncivil behaviours, is a form of technological determinism. This view assumes that technology produces its own effects. It leaves out the values and practices of the people using the technology, or the history, culture and political economy of technology development and use. (2011: 1044) Such criticisms are warranted, and none of the three main approaches withstands critical evaluation. In the instrumentalist perspective, the human is autonomous and the technological is an extension of human intent and behaviour. Yet this definition appears too narrow and does not account for the non-physical or non-material usages of the word ‘technology’. Education and propaganda, for example, have been thought of as a technology. Digital and augmented technologies appear to be something radically new in the world of technology, and the automated digital systems that now interact with society pose problems for any strict understanding of technology as tool or instrument. What guides our new modes of technological engagement is no longer solely human but may be algorithmic or response driven. Nor is modern technology simply a derivative of modern science; there is a much larger political economy at play. Much of the early research that began to explore the role of technology in social life did so from a broadly phenomenological perspective (Dourish 2004; see also Hallnäs & Redström 2002); however, this has not drawn out the implications of technology’s location within specific

42 Approaching technology places and cultural contexts. This has been recognised as problematic by scholars such as Galloway (2010). Researchers can fall afoul of ethnocentrism to such an extent that contexts for technology usage (and development) are assumed to be Western, democratic and/or alphanumeric (Galloway 2004). This gives rise to a biased language and (mis-)understanding of modern communications technology. If we think of technology as rules, technology is a system of rules and codes that, if followed correctly, give rise to some end. This perspective, the sociological approach, tends to view technology as deterministic; in this understanding, technology may be seen as oppressive rather than liberating. This usage of technology encompasses a broad spectrum of applications, from electronic circuits to devices to social practices, such as labour or education. The means-ends pattern is a process that humans can become caught up in. Systematic and efficient meansends relations are the more important feature rather than the actual nuts and bolts of machines and technological objects. It is a perspective associated with rationality but not necessarily with agency; it is an abstract system or even a force with which we engage. Mumford (2010) refers to mass labour as ‘the megamachine’, wherein human social organisation on a large scale transforms the environment. Here social organisation is cast as an efficient means to an end that operates on the environment as a technique of society itself. Ellul figures in this usage of technology when he refers to technique as ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity’ (1964: 18ff). This understanding of technique, however, provides no humane characteristics in its usage, such as care or beauty; this is important and is considered further later. Borgmann critiques Ellul on the absence of value in his account, reminding us that ‘[a] means in a traditional culture is never mere but always and inextricably woven into a context of ends’ (Borgmann 1984: 9). Modern technology has created an abstraction of means from ends and further abstracted both from their traditional socio-cultural contexts. This is perhaps a distinguishing feature of modern technology from pre-modern technology, if one wishes to make such distinctions. Whichever of the three thematic strands above might seem more appealing, they all hold a particular strength, occupy a particular place and facilitate a particular application. Borgmann argues that any new theory regarding technology would need to simultaneously transcend and incorporate the divisions among these strands. Borgmann has his own proposal, but first it is useful to turn to one of the most important scholarly papers written about technology. In his short essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, Heidegger (1977) inverts the traditionally held idea that modern technology derives from science; instead, he views science as a tool or instrument of technology. Scientific thinking, argues Heidegger, is a perspective that sees the world, and humanity along with it, as fodder for technological operations. It is not that there is a large distinction between modern and ancient technology but rather that the manifest differences between pre-modern and modern technological advances may signify a change in cultural orientation towards the employment of technology. Technology moves us

Approaching technology 43 further from experiencing things as they are towards experiencing things in a disjointed, disconnected manner; via this process, objects in the world are reframed as on-demand. The world (natural and human) becomes a standing reserve upon which to draw rather than a world within which we live. To better understand Heidegger’s approach, we first need to explore the phenomenological dimension of modern technology which he names Ge-stell, or ‘enframing’. Enframing, as the essence of technology, reduces reality to a ‘standing reserve’ at the service of instrumental technology. This standing reserve is a perceived utility that can be extracted by technology. Following the ancient Greeks, Heidegger distinguishes between technology and technique. This differentiation between technique and technology is not as evident in common English usage as in Heidegger’s original German, nor in the Greek terms on which he based his argument. Technology (Technologie in German), from the Greek τεχνολογία (technología), refers to the systematic treatment of an art, craft or technique: τέχνη (téchnē) – ‘art, skill, craft’, and-λογία (-logía) – the study of, or discourse upon, a subject. Technology/Technologia is understood as a systematic treatment; in technology, then, we see the systematic application of abstract comprehension. Technique/Téchnē (Technik in German), conversely, was a means of ‘bringing-forth’, bringing something out of concealment and into presence. In this understanding of technē, the activity is not systematic but considered, skilled and thoughtful; agency and intentionality are at work. Technique, Heidegger tells us, is not just skilful use of tools but also encompasses the arts of the mind: technē is something poetic; it is related to poiēsis, an experience of truth. While technique can refer to the skill or craft of activity, technology refers to the model based on, or systematically abstracted, from the craft. This is the important distinction between technology and its forebear technique: in this understanding, technique is always viewed as prior to technology, with technology always derived from technique. Ge-stell not only conceals what was primary to technology, but Ge-stell, as the precondition for modern technology, conceals the very manner by which it sets up a world as standing reserve, thereby enframing it as set for human exploitation. The standing reserve of our world is extracted as utility rather than carefully or mindfully revealed by our engagement with the world. There is a certain resonance then between technology and the perceived efficient utility of its application. Practitioners of technē, the masters of technique, somehow move beyond mere systematic action to reveal or bring forth the essence of the object at hand. This process of revealing is the very process of sense-making in the world, a kind of self-fulfilling activity, such that if we see the world as utility, then it becomes a world of resources to be endlessly exploited rather than as fulfilling or satiated. For Heidegger we engage with the world as we perceive it to be. We may perceive a context for our actions, but the precondition of Ge-stell conceals our context as being thrown (Geworfenheit) into the world rather than in a truthful understanding of what resides in the implications of our engagement with the world. For Heidegger, if we focus on technology, we are already on a misguided approach to understanding the essence of technology. But this seems an unsatisfactory conclusion when what we are trying to achieve is a better understanding of how

44 Approaching technology communications technology acts as a techno-social force and are warned from staring directly at the source of the problem. Not that we can demand a satisfactory answer, and we need to heed Heidegger’s caution, but maybe we can source another path.

Towards a philosophical-anthropological account of technology Continually returning to the primal nature of our engagement with the world warrants a further philosophical analysis on the nature of human experience. When we speak of human experience, it is tempting to immediately adopt the maestro’s path and refer to Dasein, or, being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1927, 1962: 27). This being is a not a dualistic (Cartesian) being but a oneness with reality, an ongoing engagement with one’s own reality realised through practice of the self (rather than engagement with a Them or It). However, Bakhtin offers a different but profoundly important perspective on human experience, that human experience is itself mediation. Bakhtin argues that an event is never an event in and of itself. That is to say, an event does not just occur and then remain as an unchangeable fact but rather can only occur in relation to something else occurring, other events. An event is a co-event by its nature. It is in the relation of one event to another that the existence of any event can be ascertained. This enables us to tackle a fundamental problem of historicism, that of the possibility for a foundational concept of comparative historiography. Traditional historicism cannot allow for comparative historicism without doing damage to the other. The other is damaged by the time-space relations imposed by the universalist history of the historian. By dismissing universalist accounts of human history and also necessarily dismissing accounts that are relativistic in nature, we find in Bakhtin (also Benjamin, see later) the possibility of understanding history as a hermeneutic, with storytelling as the foundational concept for comparative historiography. Adopting Bakhtin’s view, immediate features of human activity such as walking (see Horvath & Szakolczai 2018) and talking are activities always ‘in the midst of things’ (Ingold & Vergunst 2008: 1). If human experience – characterised as dialogical – is therefore itself a form of mediation, then any intrusion between the co-being of individuals is a double mediation, albeit in a negative form; it removes the intimacy of experience, intimacy of the moment of co-being and instead replaces it with artificial representations. Representation (humans as symbolic animals) is fundamental to both human communication and to tool-making as a human activity. Signs and symbols must then be considered as the first artificial (technological) activity of humans; man is the ‘symbol-using, symbolmaking, and symbol-misusing animal’ (Burke 1963:498). Philosophers vary in their attitudes towards technology; some are pessimistic about modern technology, such as Heidegger, and define it in distinction from pre-modern technology; others foreground language, rather than technology, as the essence of human activity, e.g. Bakhtin, while others foreground technology, perhaps in Ortega y Gasset and Gehlen. In this latter understanding, technology is

Approaching technology 45 not just a central endeavour, it is at the core of what it is to be human. The ways in which to group different thinkers together in their approach to technology is not easily done because of differences in their starting premises concerning the ontology of technology. So again, avoiding technology head-on, this section demonstrates the similarity or indeed commonality between two apparently contrasting features of human nature: tool-making and communication. Understanding Humans as symbolic animals shows how representation is fundamental to both human communication and to tool-making as two sides of the same coin, two aspects in the mediation of experience.2 This in turn will lead us closer to appreciating technology. Kenneth Burke argues for representation as one of the first techniques of humanity (1966: 491). For humanity to discover the ability to represent one thing for another allows the basis for the abstract reflective thought we see as characteristic of being human. If you are to look at a chair, and then imagine the same chair, the physical ‘real’ chair is replaced by the chair of the mind’s eye. This mental representation thus displaces the actual presentation and allows for manipulation of the representation in ways we could not with an actual chair. Yet there is one step even before this, which is recognition; one can recognise a tree as a tree or a stone as a stone, and that this tree is of the same kind as that tree and this stone of the same manner as that stone. Heidegger discusses recognition using the example of ‘threeness’ – i.e., we recognise three chairs or three apples. We do not represent the number of chairs with three; it is somehow already given, and instead we recognise the pattern of it (Heidegger 1993: 252). We recognise patterns (e.g. threeness) in our world of experience, and we then represent these patterns abstractly using symbols or signs (e.g. ‘3’). The representation is an abstraction from lived experience. Both symbols and signs involve the representation of a recognition (pattern); an image constructed from an (intimate) understanding. Here is the root of human activity, in the communication of abstract understandings of our embodied experiences in our subjective world. We recognise and construct categories in the world in which we live; we further represent these categories with symbols and signs. What makes us peculiarly human, argues Burke, influenced by his reading of Bergson’s Creative Evolution, is our use of the negative and the absence of the negatives in nature as an evidence (Burke 1963: 498f). The negative would seem to exist only in humanity’s abstract world. Burke writes, One of the negative’s prime uses, as Bergson points out, involves its role with regard to unfulfilled expectations. If I am expecting a certain situation, and a different situation occurs, I can say that the expected situation did not occur. But so far as the actual state of affairs is concerned, some situation positively prevails, and that’s that. (Burke 1963: 499) The negative in this sense is twice removed from the real, as it is a representation of a non-representation; we can speak of an unfulfilled expectations, events devoid of content-activity.

46 Approaching technology Bakhtin (1993b) similarly argues that abstract notion of the negative exists on one side only; the negative does not exist in nature, only in culture, and therefore it is a defining characteristic of human activity and it is technological. The negative is a creation, a cultural artefact and an act of human representation. A representation (image or word) relates to its subiectum (that which ‘lays under’, or to which is referred); yet, as mentioned earlier, representation is cultural, it is an abstraction.3 However close a representation is to the subiectum, it still remains a re-presentation. If the image – the representation – is made without care for the subiectum and one’s relation to it, the inherent understanding of its relation to the self and the situation is lost; the representation is but thoughtless or errant mimicry. However, if the copy is a careful representation of the subiectum and one’s relation to it, then the content-activity – the inherent understanding – can be maintained and transmitted. There can be no reclaiming of some original understanding (that is, original recognition) which is necessarily lost as changing context requires, but each new representation, each new utterance carries with it meaning imbued with its own changing context; we are therefore, in a sense, ab origine. When we participate in the understanding represented, we recognise and acknowledge our own unique participation in that changing moment (Bakhtin 1993a: 18). We take a step; the moral and integral unity of being is composed through aesthetic empathizing (Bakhtin 1993b:17f) in the singular moment of answerability of our existence. ‘The pernicious disunity and non-interpretation of culture and life can be overcome only by regaining this integrity of the act of our activity’ (Liapunov in Bakhtin 1993b: xix). The words of the translator capture the essence of liminality, that disunity that requires a step to be taken beyond the threshold, to move beyond the betwixt and between. Indeed, Liapunov points out that the work Bakhtin uses for Act or answerable deed is postupok, which derives etymologically from ‘a step taken’ (Bakhtin 1993b: xix). This instils the normative aspect of the act; a step ought to be taken, it is within movement but not at the threshold, and our being gains unity in that revealing of our intention to the world. For Heidegger, his understanding of technē is as something poetic, a revealing or bringing forth (alēthia); the word truth in English derives from proto-German trewwj, meaning ‘having good faith’. This etymological root is telling when understood as taking care-in-representation, or acting faithfully, as opposed to not taking care in the production of the image-copy but seeking a good imitation (mimicry). The systematic mechanical production of representations (technology) hinders technique (craftsmanship/artisanship) and drives technology (use of representations) onward in an infinite recursive spiral where representations are copied, imitated and sought in their own right rather than the originating recognition that has been lost out and forgotten. This recognition refers to the primary mode of being, that of existential awareness of one’s co-being in the world. When this is lost, our co-being is lost with it, given over to the purely abstract non-participative mode of being. Bakhtin writes in cautious tones: This is like the world of technology: it knows its own immanent law, and it submits to that law in its impetuous and unrestrained development, in spite of

Approaching technology 47 the fact that it has long evaded the task of understanding the cultural purpose of that development, and may serve evil rather than good. . . . All that which is technological, when divorced from the once-occurrent unity of life and surrendered to the will of the law immanent to its development, is frightening. (Bakhtin 1993b: 7) Here we see the moment of poiēsis, of technique, and we see two modes of engagement with the world: a historical, dynamic modality contrasting with an ahistorical, synchronic modality. Distinguishing modes of engagement is delicate, and the case can too easily be overstated by making rather artificial distinctions, but the intention is to demonstrate a danger in frenetic representations of our relations with the world and each other. The produced image can, as representation via technique, be a truthful representation. An image can, as technological representation (mechanically, systematically produced), be a correct representation in the meaning of fulfilling the superficial aspects required for mimetic representation. The latter can become a means to a means where the inherent, true end has been lost, especially where the replicated image is treated as a true copy, or as the ‘original’ itself (see Cuffe 2012). Therein lies the (potentially dangerous) possibility that the (mis)understanding may be repeated and systematically used again by another without the inherent sense and thus no longer be understanding at all; at least not in an authentic or faithful sense. Thus, from technique we can derive faithful representations or imitations without comprehension, the care, the intentionality, lost from within.4 The production of an image (whatever its form) is an abstract, artificial representation of our participative being. Technology is the systematic use of such representations: a myriad of signs and symbols that are all ultimately derived from our understanding of the lived world and our experience with and within our world. Human knowledge derives, in the first instance, from technique – from craft or skilful production of experience within the lived world (i.e. technique). For many authors (e.g. see Benjamin 1986 in the next paragraphs, for example) this is sharply contrasted from systematic reproduction (technology), which they equate with the careless reproduction of abstract knowledge (i.e. mimicry). In such an understanding – which is sceptical of modernism and its technological path – the substitution of mimicry for careful representation is what removes us from our understanding of the self as a participative being; we become transmogrified into an illusionary static irreproachable identity. The self becomes reified almost as if a caricature. Yet while the systematic reproduction of images, such mimicry, is thoughtless, they remain indices open for contemplation in the same manner that objects deemed as historical artefacts remain open for interpretation about the lived past (Lass 1997). To more clearly understand this perspective, let us consider Walter Benjamin’s (1986) famous essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Benjamin writes that, traditionally, the ‘uniqueness’ of this or that work of art is dependent on its context or tradition. Any work of art within a tradition speaks only to that tradition. In other words, the work’s legitimacy rests on its being born

48 Approaching technology out of a tradition that appeals to the accepted aesthetic of that same tradition. The aesthetic of any tradition upholds its own authority in defiance of the participatory nature of being and our relation to it. Every tradition speaks only to its own authority: it is an homage to some deity: a god, a person, or perhaps an ideology. A tradition is that which puts forth laws governing action; once these laws are set, the tradition and its institutionalised aesthetic are reified. For art to break out of its context, something new must speak to the tradition, and the tradition must speak to something new. The technique of the reproduction of art allows for the object to be placed in new contexts and thus to be deciphered in new ways. According to Benjamin, modern technology has brought about the possibility of the reproduction of art outside of its context, thereby simultaneously producing a question of authenticity and undermining an ideal of legitimacy within a tradition. He writes, The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. (Benjamin 1986: 3) This ‘shattering of tradition’ refers, firstly, to the devaluing or subversion of tradition; and secondly, to the recognition and acknowledgement of an alternative experience. This devaluing and freeing also entails the risk of a proliferation of experiences, meanings and traditions – so much so that the norm is eclipsed, overrun and over-determined by multiplicity, to the point of rendering it a meaningless noise. Art, says Benjamin, when freed from tradition, becomes subject to politics; that is, its traditional contextual story is no longer the only story that can be told. Its reified aesthetic has been called into question. Subjected to politics, the once authentic aesthetic is now no longer necessarily (or unquestionably) authoritative but must compete for hegemony against other possible stories, experiences, meanings, interpretations. To reiterate, what was once authentic – a representation derived from a careful participation – in our liv-ing relationship becomes usurped by the inauthentic aesthetic of tradition. This is to say, if people are consciously living according to a tradition, then the tradition is not living but prescribed; they are not truly within it. The misidentification of a careful representation of our co-being-in-the-world creates a politics of appropriation that favours one of two logical extensions; an aesthetic that indoctrinates the subject with an inauthentic tradition as the new authoritative aesthetic or, alternatively, a doctrine of nihilism where no aesthetic can gain universal appeal. Both are derailments from the once participatory moment of co-being, the living experience of careful engagement with and within the world.

Approaching technology 49

Technology as a universalising aesthetic? Sandra Harding (1998) points to four claims to universality made by modern (Western) science: the first three are that there exists one world, that there can only be one account of this one world and that there is a singular unique approach to reveal this account – i.e. the scientific method. Within these three lies an implicit fourth claim: the universality of humanity, which requires a conversion of those humans who have yet to believe the first three claims (Harding 1998). This sets up a dynamic between modern humans and non-modern or pre-modern (i.e. typically non-Western) humans, as well as a pre-set developmental path along which one might become modern – that is, how they might progress to the state of being modern. Having access to or knowledge of the single true account of things is of course a privileged and a privileging position, one that operates across dimensions of both culture and class. The claims of which Harding discusses are of course normative claims rather than scientific claims; the scientific community vis-à-vis Kuhn (1970) will accept and also argue for a science that will adopt better verifiable claims as they appear in a never-ending process of improvement and refinement. And this is the crux of the issue: a never-ending process of improvement and refinement occurs within a particular framework, and to what end? For Kuhn there is no end per se, only a paradigm shift as the prevailing framework becomes untenable in the face of mounting inconsistencies. There is no need for an end, as the means – the process itself – holds enough attraction to warrant being its own end, i.e. progress for the sake of Progress. Before modernity, science-like activities and technological developments improved to a point where need was satisfied or resources exhausted. However, both scientific activities and technological developments are now an end in their own right. This is not to dismiss the utility of science nor what technological knowledge has achieved but rather to highlight the embedded attribute for a constant working-towards ultimate control over nature. This attribute, I would argue, is not necessary for the practice of science but is an attribute wound through the current scientific mindset. The perceived value of such efforts appears to lie in the activity of the process itself, like treating the symptom of a mass social pathology: as if holding up a mirror to prove one’s existence yet seeking to refine the image ever more in order to improve one’s own deep-rooted sense of self. In Philosophie der Technik (1877), Kapp presents the notion of tools as organ projections, instruments to help the deficient human survive in a hostile world. This theme recurs in many treatments of technology: the notion that, in order for humans to survive, they must create the artificial (non-natural) conditions for survival. For Gehlen (2003), our use of technology aids human flourishing by compensating for the apparent lack of animal instinct. Technology forms part of a wider ecological structure ensuring that nature facilitates the continuation of the human species. In this sense technology mediates our environment as something which is non-human and non-natural but which has the power to transform both. The development of human tools, and later machines, appears artificial in that these artefacts do not arise spontaneously but rather out of engagement with

50 Approaching technology nature. Generally, the tool is used with intention, even if its discovery was unintentional, as with, for example, the wheel or the knot. The development of technological artefacts tends to be thought of as a linear trajectory, moving from less complex to more complex. This interpretation of artefacts is problematic, as it suggests the progressive development of human civilisation. There is, however, a complication in this line of thinking, for increasing technological complexity might not necessarily cause increasing social development. We need to ask ourselves by what standard we are measuring overall ‘progress’. Certainly, our continued existence is due in part to the techno-social systems we have developed and with which we engage. Kline (1985) posits the unique characteristic of humans as our ability to provide a feedback loop for innovation into the techno-social systems of which we are part. This is in contrast to ants, bees, beavers and so on, who all utilise similar techno-social systems but without the intentional feedback loop, as far as we currently know. The idea of humans being involved in some kind of feedback loop is an old one, with Gehlen (2003) suggesting that society is a system that reacts to its own products, of which technology is one, and a crucial one at that. Beginning from a similar argument, Gehlen introduces Schmidt, who posits three stages of technological development which, crudely summarised, move developmentally from tool to machine to automation (2003: 213). The third phase is also the last, as at the point of automation no further input from humans is required. Furthermore, this process of development as a whole is not entirely dependent on humanity, as once automation is achieved, there ceases to be impetus beyond a kind of auto-response system. Seeing humanity as engaged in a system that consists of both social and technical elements is beneficial in decentring the focus on the human as tool maker. The manufacture of the tool and the use of the tool’s product(s) are both processes deeply embedded in wider systems comprised of human, technical and natural elements. Latour (1999) questions even these seemingly basic categories as deceptive and simplistic; he argues against such dichotomizing of science and technology, or society and science, explaining that these are false dichotomies which inflict great conceptual damage on our attempts to understand the wider systems of which we are part. Technological artefacts have a context and process that posit them as tools, as opposed to heirlooms or monuments; the same is true of the activities that give rise to technological artefacts and of the products of these artefacts, whether material or conceptual. The terms ‘tool’ and ‘artefact’ thus become unwieldy as we try to define and solidify particular perspectives about them. Following Latour, then, perhaps we need to understand tools and artefacts more generally, as things already mediated through language and culture. We are quickly deeper into hermeneutic territory as we try to disentangle the nature of a phenomenon that mediates our relationship with reality and culture and returning to the themes of the first half of this chapter. Voloshinov cautions us about the relationship between language and values: Signs also are particular, material things; and, as we have seen, any item of nature, technology, or consumption can become a sign acquiring in the

Approaching technology 51 process a meaning that goes beyond its given particularity. A sign does not simply exist as a given part of reality – it reflects and refracts another reality. Therefore, it may distort that reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view; and so forth. Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation (i.e. whether it is true, false, correct, fair, good, etc.). The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Whenever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value. (1986: 10) Rather than Voloshinov’s usage of the term ‘ideological’, the phrase modal understanding might better communicate this idea that language conveys the social world in a value-laden way. In other words, any understanding of the world is already mediated by language, which gives rise to particular understandings of that same social world, much like Wittgenstein’s language games (1953). By using the term modal understanding, we are sensitive to the implication that understanding is not reducible to language alone, contra the materialist account of language by Voloshinov. The experiential nature of life, which we might also call the modality of being, can give rise to multiple understandings outside the dictates of language and can, in turn, bring about changes in the social world itself. Referencing the animating ‘spirit’ of Kant and his neo-Kantian followers’ work, Szakolczai writes, If the world outside is perceived as a chaos, then there immediately emerge fundamental negative and positive basic guiding principles that can never be questioned again. Negatively, it is pointless to try to distill and understand, humbly, the inner structures and beauties of this, our world. . . . Positively, Kant argues that the sole ethical position is to take up the challenge and heroically confront this chaos. (Szakolczai 2015: 12) This modal understanding, derived from Kant’s philosophy, describes succinctly a world that we strive against, and in this manner every success against the cosmos is, implicitly, progress. The practice of technology offers a universal aesthetics to ascribe to, the implementation of systematic and abstract knowledge against a messy and quarrelsome world – a world that engenders change in a participative relationship with our being as opposed to the technological world, which offers an illusory static (abstract) world devoid of experiential sense. The misguided appraisal of abstract knowledge over experiential wisdom then requires a sense of growth to maintain its attraction over the needs of self-growth and innerdevelopment as a social creature. The contemporary notion of ‘progress’ maintains that the political, economic and social structures of societies improve over time in an inexorable and almost natural manner. This is based on an understanding of humanity as the maker of its own destiny, subservient to neither God nor nature. Society is understood to

52 Approaching technology be largely a result of what we want it to be; by applying rationality and scientific methods to social problems we can improve our lives, individually and collectively. As modern beings in control of our own destiny, our capacity for self-knowledge becomes emancipatory. This faith in the liberating capacity of (abstract) knowledge and reason is a motivating power in the continued critical examination of social life by methods that have been clearly successful in the empirical sciences. The word ‘faith’ is used intentionally here. We all act on faith to some degree, yet the link between the application of reason and knowledge to increasing technological complexity in correlation with social development under the rubric of ‘social progress’ is problematic. This relationship is often determined to be merely a positive or a negative one – that is to say, it is perceived in either a utopian or dystopian fashion. Nisbet (1980) argues that progress is an idea with a history of over three millennia, even if its manifest forms have changed during that time. The Ancient Greeks, for example, saw the application of human intelligence over time as the source of freedom from lives as beasts – that is, as the core of what it meant to be human (Nisbet 1980: 10). The Renaissance, meanwhile, saw the working out of a divine plan, in which humanity could realise its potential in terms of cultural achievement (ibid 101ff). Yet it would seem that the ways in which progress is manifested in different eras are of different types, vis à vis Foucault’s epistemes (1970), rather than continuations in the evolution of a singular idea; but this argument is presented elsewhere and not discussed here.5 The ‘proof’ or evidence of Progress with a capital ‘P’ manifests in the development (‘invention’) of technology which is more efficient than previous stages of technology. Efficient change becomes an end in itself, striving toward ever increasingly complex and efficient levels of technology. But how did these ideas become married to social activity under a normative descriptor like ‘progress’ rather than simply being understood as change or development? Koselleck traces changes in the meaning of the term ‘progress’, positing the modern usage of it as occurring only after the end of the Renaissance and not truly embodied in European thought until the Enlightenment. Prior to this, argues Koselleck, there existed a sense of decay in a naturalistic mode – the final age of an old material world. Time advanced towards death and then rebirth – on a new plane – in the medieval European understanding of eschatology. Koselleck writes, During the eighteenth century and in the time since then, it has become a widespread belief that progress is general and constant while every regression, decline, or decay occurs only partially and temporarily. . . . The asymmetry between progress and decline is no longer related to the next world, on the one hand, and this world, on the other, as in the Christian Middle Ages, but rather progress has become a world historical category whose tendency is to interpret all regressions as temporary and finally even as the stimulus for new progress. (2002: 227)

Approaching technology 53 While Koselleck looked at the etymological roots and linguistic usage of the term ‘progress’ in its different guises, it is also important to examine the experiential nature of the changes occurring in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment developed around a number of dynamic phenomena, including the printing press, the scientific method, the increasing status of vernacular languages and concurrent increasing literacy, the discovery of new lands and cultures, and even the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which has been mooted as an instigating factor for Enlightenment thought (Hamacher 1999). Accompanying the linguistic and experiential phenomena, there are two central philosophical points that created the conditions for the intertwining of rationality with progress. The first of these focal points is the ‘gap’ that Descartes introduced into European thinking: the articulation of a two-story being. This gap posits a distinction between the subjective mind and the objective body/world, placing a gap between the psychic and the material whilst simultaneously privileging the psychic over the material: Cogito Ergo Sum. This famous maxim should, in fact, read Ego cogito, ergo ego sum, as the maxim is based on an unreal idealised ‘I’ (ego) (de Unamuno 1972: 35ff.). This manner of abstract, rational thinking brings us to the second focal point, one reinforced by neo-Kantian philosophy, responsible for introducing the value of ‘distance’ as an element in European philosophy. This distance – that is, distance of the observer from the event – suggests a privileged status for the disconnected and abstracted rational thinker and places this thinking statue as judge and arbiter (Elias & Schröter 2001). It is telling that Koselleck in his linguistic history of the concept attributes the first usage of the term der Fortschritt (progress) to Kant, a word that neatly and deftly brought the manifold of scientific, technological, and industrial meaning of progress, and finally also those meanings involving social morality and even the totality of history, under a common concept. (2002: 229) Koselleck argues that this adoption of a linguistic term as a common process in the late eighteenth century consolidates increasingly complex experiences to higher levels of abstraction. It is not that the word ‘progress’ did not exist prior to the Enlightenment, but rather that since the Enlightenment, progress has become a cosmology that is quasi-deified as an essential dynamic within, and telos of, human history itself. We have seen the ramifications of this way of thinking for understanding societies and cultures in the previous chapter, as Lorenz writes, Through the introduction of world time, historians have interpreted the spatial variety of nations, economies and so on in terms of different positions on the axis of time; that is, in terms of different phases of the same development. Differences in geography are thus transformed into differences in time: being culturally or economically different – for example China in relation to the United States – is thus transformed into being ‘late’ or being ‘early’. (2004: 43)

54 Approaching technology From within the modal understanding of Progress, alternative modes of being will necessarily be perceived through the modal lens of Progress. So we have two common contemporary usages of the term; one progress relates to how disciplines and fields develop and improve over time. A second contemporary usage is as a characterisation of our time: the concept of Progress with a capital ‘P’. This relays how we perceive society as improving over the passage of time, incrementally moving forward towards a better life, a better type of society, liberated from the ailments of the past. This overarching concept of Progress perpetuates its own myths of progress through the social practices of developing technology for improving social life and associating increasing technological complexity with the betterment of social living. As Hans Jonas phrases it, ‘Not only does technology dominate our lives . . . it nourishes also a belief in its being of predominant worth’ (1979: 38). Connotations of Progress marry increasing technological complexity to human action in a normative claim that increased technological complexity improves society; the enchantment of new technologies appears to feed the sentiment that technological innovations hold answers and solutions to existing problems – as opposed to an alternatively held view of being symptomatic of problems and creating even more. Jonas (1979) argues that technological development, when left to its own devices, is always progress. But this is not the same thing as the cosmological Progress with a capital ‘P’. As Jonas states, ‘Progress’ is here not a value term but purely descriptive . . . but while not a value term, ‘progress’ here is not a neutral term either, for which we could simply substitute ‘change’. For it is in the nature of the case . . . that a later stage is always, in terms of technology itself, superior to the preceding stage. Thus we have a case of the entropy-defying sort (organic evolution is another), where the internal motion of a system, left to itself and not interfered with, leads to ever ‘higher,’ not ‘lower’ states of itself. Such at least is their present evidence. (1979: 35) This formal description of the dynamics of modern technology then moves Jonas to address why this is so. He eliminates the capitalist system and rightly dismisses human impetus as post hoc rather than ante hoc (1979: 36). He finds the answer instead in the attitude of our ontological-epistemic orientation, or as Jonas phrases it, the modern cognitive impulse that instils a kind of feedback loop between modern science and technology. Technology establishes itself as a means but further establishes its means as ends, thereby maintaining an unobtainable horizon simultaneously offering direction and purpose; Jonas refers to this as a ‘transcendental end’. According to Jonas, Progress (capital ‘P’), failing some kind of coup, occurs with, or without us, as it is the modus operandi of contemporary society; it is our modal understanding. Progress appears within the cultural realm at the status of an ontological category, so that other cultures might operate in distinction from the tenets of Progress.

Approaching technology 55 Progress as an ideology, a Progress of progresses, appears as the overarching conception within which we understand historical change; as Koselleck puts it, ‘“Progress” becomes a processual concept of reflection’ (2002: 228). One might argue that societies today are more interdependent and therefore more complex than ‘earlier’ societies, and therefore societies today are ‘better’; but by what standard or value are we truly ascribing betterment? Are we truly Progressing? How might one even properly ask this question: ‘Is human activity better now than it was before?’

Conclusion Technology in contemporary research is treated far more critically than during previous decades. It is now commonplace to raise questions as to whether technology should – or indeed can – be understood in a progressive sense. An increasing focus on ecology, sustainability and resilience aroused an increased scepticism regarding the use of the term ‘progress’ in relation to technological development and a broadening of what such ‘development’ entails in practice. Technologies are increasingly embedded and invisible within our day-to-day lives, raising questions about how technologies, far from having a ‘liberating’ or ‘democratic’ effect on society, may instead serve to embed and conceal relations of power and control within any given society. One can look, for example, at the role of Cambridge Analytica and its profiling of potential voters for vested interests and its concerning relationship with Facebook.6 This aspect of technology, in which it appears to secrete its operations whilst simultaneously fostering greater utility, reinforces the theoretical and practical concerns for the societies in which we live. At the root of this is a questioning of our ontological attitude and the communication of our experience in society, and by extension the manner in which cultural transmission takes place. Thus, we reach a realization that the anthropological lies at the heart of the philosophical in trying to understand technology, and we next move to engage more thoroughly with examples from China in an effort to better understand the manner of our engagement with technology.

Notes 1 See Horvath and Szakolczai (2018) Walking into the Void; Horvath (2015) ‘The Genealogy of Political Alchemy: The Technological Invention of Identity Change’ in Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. 2 This note is to acknowledge the shadow of Foucault that looms over the discussion to follow, particularly his The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966), but the path here primarily follows Heidegger and Bakhtin. The extent to which Foucault is distinct or not, or should be more closely followed, will have to be explored in another work. 3 In Bakhtinian terms, we would say it is an abstraction from subiectum. 4 Where a symbol becomes its own sign, with the loss of reference to any deeper reality or to that which it is meant to represent, then the symbol as sign is misused. In modern times, currency is an example of such a pathology, where money itself is understood as invested with value rather than as a symbol of value that lies elsewhere.

56 Approaching technology 5 See for example Koselleck’s The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. 6 See for detailed analysis: The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridgeanalytica-files, last accessed 17 May 2019.

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M., 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: Texas University Press. Bakhtin, M. M., 1993a. Art and Answerability. Austin: Texas University Press. Bakhtin, M. M., 1993b. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: Texas University Press. Benjamin, W., & Arendt, H., 1986. Illuminations. New York: Schocken. Borgmann, A., 1984. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago: University Chicago Press. Burke, K., 1963. The Definition of Man. The Hudson Review [online], 16(4), 491–514. Available from: www.jstor.org/stable/3848123 [Accessed 3rd November 2014]. Burke, K., 1966. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crowley, D. J., & Heyer, P., 2011. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson. Cuffe, J., 2012. Beauty & Careful Representation: Interpreting the Social and the Cosmic. In: Horvath, A., & Cuffe, J., eds. Reclaiming Beauty: Collected Essays in Political Anthropology. Florence, Italy: Ficino Press, 141–178. Dourish, P., 2004. What We Talk about When We Talk about Context. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 8(1), 19–30. Dusek, V., 2006. Philosophy of Technology: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Elias, N., & Schröter, M., 2001. The Society of Individuals. New York: Continuum. Ellul, J., 1964. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault. M., 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon Books. Galloway, A., 2004. Intimations of Everyday Life: Ubiquitous Computing and the City. Cultural Studies, 18(23), 384–408. Galloway, A., 2010. Locating Media Futures in the Present: Or How to Map Emergent Associations and Expectations. The Journal of Media Geography, 5, 27–36. Gehlen, A., 2003. A Philosophical-Anthropological Perspective on Technology. In: Scharff, R. C. & Dusek, V., eds. Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 213–220. The Guardian, 2019. The Guardian Cambridge Analytica Files [online]. Available from: www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files [Accessed 2nd July 2019]. Hallnäs, L., & Redström, J., 2002. From Use to Presence: On the Expressions and Aesthetics of Everyday Computational Things. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 9(2), 106–124. Hamacher, W., 1999. Premises: Essays on Philosophy and Literature from Kant to Celan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Harding, S., 1998. Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, M., 1962. Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M., 1977. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper & Row.

Approaching technology 57 Heidegger, M., & Krell, D. F., 1993. Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to the Task of Thinking (1964). San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco. Horvath, A., 2015. The Genealogy of Political Alchemy: The Technological Invention of Identity Change. In: Horvath, A., Thomassen, B., & Wydra, H., eds. Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 72–92. Horvath, A., & Szakolczai, A., 2018. Walking into the Void: A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking. New York: Routledge. Ingold, T., & Vergunst, J. L., eds., 2008. Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Jonas, H., 1979. Toward a Philosophy of Technology. The Hastings Centre Report, 9(1), 34–43. Kapp, E., 1877. Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik, zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Cultur aus neuen Gesichtspunkten. Braunschweig: G. Westermann. Kline, S. J., 1985. What Is Technology? Bulletin of Science Technology & Society, 5, 215. Koselleck, R., 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kuhn, T., 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. London: University of Chicago Press. Lass, R., 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latour, B., 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lorenz, C., 2004. Towards a Theoretical Framework for Comparing Historiographies: Some Preliminary Considerations. In: Seixas, P., ed. Theorizing Historical Consciousness. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 25–48. Mumford, L., 2010. Technics and Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nisbet, R., 1980. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books. Szakolczai, A., 2015. Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events. In: Horvath, A., Thomassen, B., & Wydra, H., eds. Breaking Boundaries. New York: Berghahn Books. Unamuno, M. D., 1972. The Tragic Sense of Life Men and Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Voloshinov, V. N., 1986. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, L., 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell. Yang, G., 2011. Technology and Its Contents: Issues in the Study of the Chinese Internet. Journal of Asian Studies, 70(4), 1043–1050.

4

Media in China

Introduction ‘Western’ science and technology do not extinguish local traditions and beliefs even if the precepts behind them are universalising; it may modify them, but often only in the manner through which local people and situations appropriate new technologies into everyday life. Local uses of new technologies can be innovative, and in different political systems we can look at alternative uses of technology for comparative analysis of power structures and techno-social change. A technological artefact is imbued with a cultural context and social meaning that can vary over time, and across cultures, it remains socio-culturally embedded: a handwritten love letter provides a different sentiment to the same text sent by email, its meaning depending on generation and culture, for example. Such variations in understanding can give rise to ingenious uses of modern technologies, whose original core function may be lost on the local user. While many will argue that there is increasing cultural homogenisation anyway, as users from expanding markets use similar products with similar expectations, this becomes problematic for issues surrounding digital equality and social inclusion, for instance, when data sets for voice recognition are based on English spoken by wealthy white Americans rather than an internationally diverse group of speakers of ‘Globish’.1 It is at this axis of communication and technology where bias, ideology, creed and philosophy, whether overt or covert, effect real changes within global society. So in this chapter we turn to the media in China, the development of modern media practices, ideas in understanding their effects and how we might interpret media under the permanent liminality framework.

Effects of technology on communication The development of communication practices are best described as structural changes in the social coordinates of space (or place) and time. Looking at development in this way, van Dijk’s two designated types of changes are useful; changes can be understood as either technological or structural (2012). Technological developments increase existing capacity in a distinct manner. Technical developments are those inventions that impact upon already existing modes of

Media in China 59 communication. For example, the invention of writing as a structural development was followed by the invention of printing as a technological development. It is the technological aspect that can be a core focal point for state and regulative activities, as this is the aspect of communication that can be patented, regulated, privatised or outlawed. While it is difficult to regulate or capitalise on the reproduction of writing as a practice, i.e. the social skill of literacy, it is much easier to enforce restrictions on the technology of printing. Both pencils and printing machines can be held in a state monopoly of some kind; while tools can be manufactured independently of the state, it is easier for the state to maintain a monopoly on the materials that are needed to produce, say, a printing machine, which is more complex to produce and also easier to regulate and control sales of once completed. Structural developments such as literacy cause distinctive changes in how understanding can be communicated, but technological developments have their effects too. Digital technology has revolutionised the ways in which information can be transmitted in many ways. It has unified different media networks (telecommunications, data communications and mass communications) that were previously analogue in nature to give rise to what we call today new media. In analogue devices, natural signals are converted into electrical signals for transmission and then converted back into analogue at the receiver’s end. Such transmission was open to degradation and misinterpretation during the conversion and transmission processes. With digitization, all signals can be converted into bit code, the familiar binary digits of zeros and ones. Digital media have greater speed and are far more resistant to interference during transmission; they have high fidelity. Digital technology is deemed superior due to its speed, capacity and adherence to exact reproduction, as it makes fewer mistakes or flaws, thus is less prone to misinterpretation. Some of these attributes can already be seen as socially destructive or productive depending on the communication style and end-use or intention of the message. For example, letter writing has suffered greatly with the advent of email. Messages are instantaneous, so no more do we feel the anticipation of waiting for the letter to arrive in the post from a loved one. Emails tend to be written with less care and attention due to this increase in availability of messaging and ‘undo’ features. Letters cost money to post and are delicate to write clearly, and making mistakes is costly and time consuming. This is not so with emails: if there is a mistake, a new one can be sent immediately clarifying the original intention. This of course can be seen first as a benefit but has a social impact beyond it of reducing the care and attention that letter writing afforded. The value (both social and personal) granted to letters is not applicable to emails in the same way. In China there has been a remarked decrease in the skill of handwriting characters due to the predominance of predictive text. The eye needs to recognise characters rather than know how to write them. Similarly, in Ireland and elsewhere it has been noted (Hill: 2018) that the finger dexterity of children is declining to the extent that children can find it hard to manipulate pencils due to the increased use of tablets from a young age.2 While opening and looking at an individual’s mail is a federal offense in the United States, it forms the mainstay for generating income through advertising

60 Media in China for Google’s Gmail service that customises adverts to the email recipients based on the content of their emails. Here we can see that the social importance of the materiality of a message is affected by the ability of technological development to multiply and replicate messages at ease. Cases similar to letters and letter writing can be seen in the shift from video cassettes to DVDs, music tapes to CDs and now to online instant streaming and constant availability. The instant and available nature of modern media can reduce the value and importance of older forms of communication. The effects of such changes are seen in the disappearance of video stores and closure of music shops and indeed post offices. It is important to note that vinyl records have seen growth in recent years despite their low fidelity, and the imagined death of books due to digital readers such as the Kindle never materialised, so cultural values and social norms can override more efficient and complex technological developments. There is a curious interplay at work in techno-social forces despite the overarching theme of development of complexity and progressive modal understanding. In China, this interplay occurs as a mediation of liminality and crisis since the 3rd Plenum and the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese Communist Party [CCP] has encouraged the media to operate on an increasingly commercialised basis yet still perform its function as a party mouthpiece. The paradox of political control and economic pressure to reform in a liminal environment creates the contradictory background within which the Chinese media operates.

Media in China The increasing commercialisation of media in China is leading to greater competition in the search for lead stories. The very nature of mass media implies a testing of what can and cannot be reported in order to increase market share. This leads to increasing problems for the Department of Propaganda, and shows like Super Girl, which might be seen by some as frivolous teenage entertainment programs, at the same time introduce young people to the submission and expression of their opinions and choices in the election of a desired victory – the democratic vote. Super Girl (a TV talent show – see Chapter 6) actually became an issue for discussion for the Standing Committee of the Politburo (Shirk 2007). Furthermore, the print media can track issues online and occasionally risk printing something if they can ascertain that the issue at hand is of sufficient interest to their readership (the ‘public’) that the government will have to make some statement on it. Examples of this would include events concerning Taiwan, especially statements coming from Taiwanese leaders or high-level politicians from the United States on the issue of Taiwanese independence. Other issues include antagonism with Japan or Vietnam or actions by North Korea. It is enticing to conclude that the proliferation of new digital technologies might do for China something akin to what the printing press did for Europe. However, we can also see that suggesting technology is democratising is tenuous considering the potential rise of technocrats or technocratic oligarchies. This dichotomy pushes us back towards the discursive practice and debating across fast-running waters.

Media in China 61 Every new technology undergoes a period of initiation whereby it is phased in, and people educate themselves as to its use before any technology can be considered ubiquitous. It is often only once the technology becomes ubiquitous that regulation appears as an attractive activity for the state or oligarchy to ensure or create some power dynamic; for example a state television licence could only be introduced once a majority of the population possessed a television, thereby making it financially viable to do so. As such, the extent to whether a technocratic elite will arise depends as much, if not more, on the social dynamics that technology is introduced into rather than dependent on the technology itself. Shirk provides statistics from polls concerning public opinion amongst internet users, students and users of print media etc. Such polls and statistics are to be mistrusted, as polls can be unreliable and often do not reflect the general feeling of the actual populace but only of those who have responded to the polls. The general sentiment in a democracy can be determined after an election and any polls quickly forgotten. However, in China, due to the political system that is in place, polls are of vital importance in that they are the only means of identifying what public opinion might be in a society where freedom to express and the democratic vote are not possible. Thus, as Shirk notes, the polls in China can actually become effective (if overvalued) amongst the political elite, and this leads to some fundamental problems in China’s handling of domestic and international issues that are of a sensitive nature to the Chinese masses. We can highlight an example from Shirk with China’s policy towards Taiwan: ‘In contrast with [China’s] pragmatic diplomacy toward other countries, China’s approach to Taiwan is driven more by symbolic issues of principle that reverberate in domestic politics’ (2007: 195). Such issues reverberate in China’s domestic politics, and these are the issues that are particularly sensitive, so that the mistreatment or misjudged action can end a political career at best or cause riots and general destabilisation. Any public backlash as a result of media stories regarding Taiwan, whether due to print or internet sources, can quickly grow and prove a real threat to the authority of CCP leaders themselves; The economic ties across the Strait appear to influence policy more in democratic Taiwan than in authoritarian China where the private businesses, coastal provinces, and the ‘silent majority’ who value economic progress over the ‘one China principle’ have no political voice. (Shirk 2007: 211) This situation highlights the influence of the emotive concerns of those who post strong opinions in internet forums and stir up sentiment on any given policy, not just that of Taiwan.3 Even in regard to the print media, information control is getting more complex. Liu Xiaobo (a political activist jailed in China for his actions, such as being a signatory to Charter 08) describes it in the following way: ‘It is the consumers who command the loyalty of media managers now. . . . They show fake enthusiasm for the orders from above, but their efforts to curry favour with the customer are genuine’ (Shirk 2007: 83). The evident tension between political

62 Media in China action and perceived desires of the public against the backdrop of facts as they are on the ground is a recurring feature in each of the issues that Shirk addresses, be it Taiwan, Japan, the United States or domestic problems (unemployment, poverty, separatism, ethnic conflict). Her full recognition of the importance of communications technology in understanding the political atmosphere of contemporary China is betrayed; once making judgements as to the impact of communications technology, she invariably understands communications technology as inherently a force for liberalisation and as a difficulty for the CCP: Liberating technology will bring the regime down either by forcing them to act in a politically untenable manner internationally or by stirring up social discontent due to domestic issues that the party and government will be unable to deal with. (Shirk 2007: 55) Under a democratisation framework, the internet is perceived as a vital tool in the eventual democratisation of China, via the emergence of public opinion and a space for the free discussion of the political agenda; the internet is understood, in other words, as a liberative technology. Diamond takes liberative technology to refer to any form of communications technology that in his view can ‘expand political, social, and economic freedom’ (2010: 70). This is a good example of what might be called a typical libertarian position (see Chapters 1 and 3). In his article, Diamond presents the merits of both libertarians and technological pessimists, arguing that it will be the ability to politically organise that decides whether or not ‘liberation technology’ succeeds in its task of ‘[winning] the race’ (ibid.). It is interesting that he uses the term ‘race’, denoting an achievable objective and a combative positioning between opponents – e.g. Society versus State, People versus Government. But we should not forget that the internet in China is rolled out by the Chinese government and the CCP. It is facilitated in its operations in every way by political forces and economic forces under political leadership. Technology is not introduced by China as an affront to the Chinese political system. In many respects, the attitude of the Chinese political leadership towards such ‘liberating technology’ is in line with other nation-states. In June 2010 the Chinese government published a white paper titled The Internet in China acknowledging the internet as a crystallisation of human wisdom and called for the importance of public opinion in supervising the actions of the government: The authorities attach great importance to social conditions and public opinion as reflected on the Internet, which has become a bridge facilitating direct communication between the government and the public. (Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China June 8th 2010) The white paper goes on to acknowledge the full freedom of speech of Chinese citizens on the internet, as an extension of a constitutional right to free

Media in China 63 speech (Section III P6). This may be interpreted as suggesting that freedoms of speech can be curtailed if deemed unlawful. The targeted practices are those that include the spread of information that contains contents subverting state power, undermining national unity, infringing upon national honor and interests, inciting ethnic hatred and secession, advocating heresy, pornography, violence, terror and other information that infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of others. According to these regulations, basic telecommunication business operators and Internet information service providers shall establish Internet security management systems and utilize technical measures to prevent the transmission of all types of illegal information. (ibid 2010: 9) While Diamond is expressly aware of some of the traps that libertarians can fall into – ‘technological utopianism’, ‘chronocentricity’4 – he nevertheless argues from a normative teleological perspective. In the particular case of China, he writes, With the aid of liberation technology, dissident intellectuals have gone from being a loose assortment of individuals with no specific goal or program to forming a vibrant and increasingly visible collaborative force. (2010: 75) The language that Diamond uses here indicates that it is the technology that has empowered dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo et al and Charter 08, the 2008 manifesto demanding a list of changes for the Chinese State. If technology is liberative, it does not really account for the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo and others, nor does it explain their sentiment, and it does not explain their motivations. It is not clear how a liberative technology such as the internet has provided any greater facility than the technology of printing did during the Democracy Wall, where dissident individuals self-organised and distributed print materials espousing their views. In fact, Diamond somewhat contradictorily ends his article with the declaration, ‘It is not technology, but people, organizations, and governments that will determine who prevails’ (Diamond 2010: 82). His optimistic view of liberation technology comes through in the many examples he cites supporting the capacity of technology for political accountability, while failing to balance the picture he paints with the simultaneous capacity of technology for surveillance. Instead, for Diamond, surveillance and other ‘negative’ uses of technology seem to be things that happen after the fact. In this understanding, it seems that the initial technology is inherently liberative, in and of itself; any nefarious, controlling unliberative uses are secondary hijackings. One might easily offer counterexamples using the same software or method for each positive portrayal of liberation technology that he describes. Views of an inherent liberating capacity of technology, as proposed by Diamond, must be balanced with a more nuanced appreciation of how technology is a part-player in social change.

64 Media in China It might be the lack of an alternative vocabulary that chains him to presumptive arguments of which he earlier appears well aware. Shirk (2007, 2011) has examined the impact of China’s economic rise, specifically referring to the relationships between communications technology, politics and economics. In general, economic forces are the appeasing force for Shirk, tying the authorities into amenable actions to safeguard economic values. While she does not use the language, implicit in her tone is the rationalising influence of economic consideration on political actions. For Shirk, technology acts as the biggest danger to radical and sudden displacement of the current political regime in China. Shirk’s appraisal of the media in contemporary China relays many examples highlighting the integral role of the communications technology in China’s political affairs. Although this is not her main objective, it shows her keen understanding of the importance that public opinion poses on the authoritarian regime, a fact sometimes neglected by other commentators. Her aim to identify some of the key strategic issues of concern with China’s rise to the international stage, and through examining both domestic and external factors, she provides a fascinating picture of the minefield Chinese leaders tread through in trying to keep China’s rise on track. She does not see this path as a foregone conclusion and identifies three elements for the communist regime’s political survival: (1) avoid political leadership splits, (2) prevent large-scale social unrest and (3) keep the military on the side of the party (Shirk 2007). The mass media is of central importance to these interdependent problems. Although mainland print media are curtailed in what they can report by threat of heavy repercussions, the internet remains available, whereupon polemic news items are picked up quickly in Hong Kong and other areas and spread out to the international media. Conversely, international news stories of concern to Chinese readers are also quickly picked up and spread throughout mainland chat rooms and forums and relayed as ‘public opinion’ to China’s political elite by their pervasive army of internet watchdogs. In keeping with this fact, Shirk notes that: Public opinion carries much more weight than it did in the past. Any sign of popular disaffection that could imperil stability will count against the current leaders and raise the risk of leadership splits. . . . In recent years senior officials have pit more credence in the information they gather by monitoring the Internet and the market-orientated mass media. (2007: 44) This raises interesting thoughts about sensationalism and fanaticism; as Shirk points out, while democracies look to the majority who determine elections, autocracies are concerned about the more vocal groups that are able and more inclined to mobilise and have others follow despite their perhaps being a minority. According to Shirk, under China’s ‘win-win’ philosophy (i.e. China’s new engagement with the outside world is beneficial for all) the number one danger to China are its own internal threats. At the heart of the disparate social issues in contemporary China are information flow and information control. Therefore, the key to understanding how internal threats may rise, be controlled or succeed is in

Media in China 65 understanding the fundamental structures and relations at play in the development and use of mediative technologies in China today and going forward. Economic reforms brought in by Deng Xiaoping on the one hand led to greater economic autonomy amongst certain strata of Chinese society and certainly led to increased technological development, specifically in relation to telecommunications, with the introduction of mobile phones and subsequently the internet. Information and communications technology (ICT) has the power to agitate social life and to allow new social relationships and interactions that any authority might find difficult to wholly control if absolute control were actually a goal or desire. Mediative technologies have the power to facilitate new forms of collective action that can prove extremely dangerous to an authoritarian regime that does not have the capabilities to prevent it. Two contemporary examples of this include the famous protests by the Falun Gong in Beijing in 1999 and the Mag-Lev Protests in Shanghai in 2008; though different in scale, each are very intriguing events. In Beijing an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 practitioners managed to orchestrate a peaceful mass protest. Not since the student Tiananmen protests of 1989 had such a large group mobilised at the gates to power in China. Arriving to Zhongnanhai (equivalent to the White House or No. 10 Downing Street) without the political elite nor security leaders’ prior knowledge, they silently made a strong statement of their intent, given their numbers and ability to organise, while the group sought legal recognition from the Chinese government.5 This proved a disaster for the Falun Gong, who were subsequently banned from China due to the now perceived real organisational threat they posed to the CCP. A second popular example concerns property owners in Shanghai who arranged spontaneous walks on 6 January 2008 (collectively taking a walk 集体散步 jítǐ sànbù).6 These walks were prearranged by text messaging, email and instant chat services to occur on a certain street at a certain time. The object of the protests was the extension of the Mag-Lev rail system in Shanghai to Hangzhou. The extension to the magnetic rail line has at the time of writing been halted, indicating some success from these protests. The protestors were concerned over health impacts living so close to the new magnetic rail lines and perhaps also the possibility of lowering property values. The demographic for the protestors is relatively new, being the middle-income consumers who have started out on the ‘Chinese Dream’.7 An alternative theory for the occurrence of protests is their orchestration by the Ministry of Railways, which was building a rival conventional rail system and would have suffered commercially if in competition with a high-speed magnetic levitating rail system.

Technology as a part-player in social change An important attribute of the internet as a communication technology is that it can be turned off at the nation-state level, thereby making communication nearly impossible (though of course such difficulties are experienced unequally, with alternative routes of access – such as satellite use – still possible for those with

66 Media in China money, equipment, expertise and connections). In Egypt the internet was interrupted by the state during the unrest of 2011 (BBC News 2011). In the same year, employing a different tactic – commandeering the internet rather than shutting it down altogether – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir reportedly employed Facebook to crush opposition supporters (Sudan Tribune 2011). Zhao Yuezhi (2008) argues that the two main aims for the Chinese government’s programme of effective censorship are, first, to suppress content that opposes or contradicts the official party narrative (e.g. topics such as the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 or the Tibetan Independence Movement); and, second, to dissuade mass organisation, campaigning and/or dissemination of information that could lead to social unrest on any topic. Zhao (2008) persuasively argues that increasing complexity in communications technology only results in increasing the complexity of methods available to and utilised by both the censor and the political activist, without giving either the edge. As communication – the power to speak – decentralises, so too do the methods for regulation and control. There are many facets to the current methods used both directly and indirectly by the Chinese state for censorship and supervision of information. Boundaries between self- and state censorship are blurred on many levels: such pairings or distinctions as individual/community, civil/commercial and state/non-state do not adequately describe the complexities or ad hoc manner of censorship in China. Even the term censorship can be a misnomer; given that certain content (e.g. pornography) is deemed morally rather than ideologically inappropriate, the line between the two is not always clear-cut (if any distinction should be made at all – see recent efforts by the UK government to censor and prevent access to pornographic material). Self-censorship, where major sites foster an environment where users monitor their own content, is a major method of censorship – although difficult when one does not know exactly where the line not to be crossed is. At the time of writing, nine companies administered the gateways which connect China to the rest of the worldwide internet infrastructure. These corporations must monitor and prevent connections to unapproved websites outside China. This effectively creates a Chinese intra-web with limited connections to external worldwide sites. Censorship can also be mechanical, as with the web-bots that are fed lists of censored words and then trawl the internet in mindless fulfilment of their censorial programming. Censorship can, moreover, be pro-active, as in the case of the so-called ‘50-centers’ (五毛党 Wǔmáo Dǎng)8 – individuals who receive a small remittance for registering with forums, reading comments and posting Communist Party-line comments while censoring or admonishing any criticism of the party, or repudiating texts that go against the party line on sensitive topics. The ‘50 Cent Army’ is currently being superseded by the ‘Internet Water Army’, which recruits on a professional basis for these activities rather than outsourcing to the Chinese public (e.g. students, gamers, etc). Certainly, communications technology has potential for achieving political aims, but what are the conditions or forces that allow such a potentiality to be realised? Throwing an individual a mobile phone and tasking them with achieving

Media in China 67 freedom rests on many conditions. There are a multitude of forces and circumstances that must be in place for a mobile phone to be used in any particular way: power-source, network reception, knowledge and ability to use the mobile, perception that one is not free in the first place, awareness of what freedom might look like if achieved and, not least, the secret motivations of the individual and their understanding of who they are and who they want to be. The internet is seen by some as a ‘public sphere’, with the tools and potential to build and develop China’s as-yet-inchoate civil society. Such arguments remain firmly within the realm of normative teleological ideas of ‘progress’ as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. Public sphere theory posits public opinion generated by open, free discussion, which then impacts on political action. Yet in China the internet acts more like an echo chamber in lieu of an open discursive space – loud voices with extreme opinions, though for the most part within acceptable limits set by the political authority (e.g. anti-Japanese sentiments or expressions of extreme nationalism). Opinions shared on the Chinese internet can originate from a loud and radicalised minority, not unlike other countries. The type of space available for discussion on public digital platforms is far from the idealisation of rational deliberation and a democratic public sphere.

Conclusion From the previous chapter on the relationship between abstraction, progress and technology, we can understand that the modal understanding through which any given society operates will affect the effect of media as a techno-social force. Any understanding of the relationship between technology and communication needs to take into account the operation of language and communication at the level of ontology, and here again Bakhtin can serve as our guide, with his concept of the superaddressee. In understanding technology as an abstraction of communication, a representation of a lived relationship with and within reality, there is implicitly a reliance on what Bakhtin calls a superaddressee. Communication is first and foremost observed as a social activity in that the speaker assumes an audience or at least presumes comprehension is possible even if the audience is not immediately present. Language is, in its essence, a participative phenomenon. It is the result of social communion, expressing thought and explaining action seeking communality. Language implies the social, others to whom we address our thoughts and explain our actions. When we hold a dialogue with another individual, Bakhtin argues for an implicit third addressee whom he refers to as the superaddressee. The reasoning is that any dialogue assumes a frame of reference so that sensible communication can occur. This frame of reference or symbolic third person is the inherent social aspect of language. The superaddressee stands apart from the particularity of any singular dialogue in order to provide an authoritative bridge of meaning between dialogues and people. This authoritative meaning is assumed/implied by the speaker as they speak, seeking comprehension that, in turn, justifies their own voice. Understanding – once realised in another – recognises one’s existence and confirms one’s experiences.

68 Media in China The superaddressee is not a transcendental abstract notion but one that is inherent in the practice of language. Bakhtin refers to this dimension of communication as the thirdness of language. It is important to understand the superaddressee as something inherent in communication, as otherwise it is difficult to understand the creation of value which itself is exercised through action (Graeber 2001). Bakhtin argues that the superaddressee as a symbol of ‘ideally true responsive understanding assume[s] various ideological expressions’ (1986: 126). This quote underlines the claims to truth by various ideologues that hijack an inherent experiential quality of language as opposed to something abstract, universal and static that Bakhtin explicitly argues against in Toward a Philosophy of the Act (1993), where he uses Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ as an example. Bakhtin’s understanding of experience as a doublesided phenomenon (at once involved in reality and thought of reflectively) further opens up the nature of communication. This central theme is the participative nature of being that is at once both unified and removed from itself: Insofar as I am actually experiencing an object, even if I do so by thinking of it, it becomes a changing moment in the ongoing event of my experiencing (thinking) it, i.e. it assumes the character of something-yet-to-be-achieved. (1993: 32) What Bakhtin means is that the singular moment of being, or experiencing, holds within it an inseparable unity of what is, and what is yet to be, being and value. The importance of understanding an event as a dynamic participative moment of co-being is fundamental. Abstract thinking, such as in the manner of the neoKantians, holds itself removed from being under the idea that such abstract rationality when devoid of any content-activity holds universal validity. Explaining this using the example of the categorical imperative, Bakhtin writes that to understand a moral act as legitimate according to some abstract universal law is to actually misunderstand the act itself as something that ought to be performed in the acknowledgement of the social and the participative nature of being. Any understanding of language and communication will go astray if language is understood as something apart from and abstract from the lived world. The common example is a map is not the territory, language not a dictionary; a dictionary merely records a language and as such never fully encompasses it. Language is at once dynamic and experienced rather than static and abstract. Such a perspective has important ramifications whereby meaning is fluid and interpretative (hermeneutic, phenomenological) rather than solid and positivist. Normative standards that are ‘transcendental’ and ‘universal’ are socially created values contingent on particular misappropriations of the ‘witness’ or superaddressee to our participative being. Our (co)being is dynamic, both recursive and reflective, and therefore any framework for understanding our relationship to technology and communication needs to privilege both the role of the superaddressee and the content of the superaddressee. That is to say, any theoretical framework needs to be aware of implicit

Media in China 69 and shared understandings of language within the social, historical and regional context.

Notes 1 A portmanteau of global and English coined by Jean-Paul Nerrière in 2004. 2 See for example www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/25/children-struggle-to-holdpencils-due-to-too-much-tech-doctors-say 3 See also Jim McGregor, No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism. 4 Standage defines chronocentricity as ‘the egotism that one’s own generation is poised on the very cusp of history’ (1998: 213). 5 Not reported in mainland media at the time, but details are relatively well known regardless if conflicting on some points; source for numbers here taken from the Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/04/26/silent-protest-draws-thousandsto-beijing/e0b7ee29-eec6-48ba-b6a6-5cd10980ec77/?noredirect=on&utm_term=. c0ec823928a1 6 Reported in many international mainstream media outlets; see Al Jazeera 24 January 2008 or Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily 6 January 2008. 7 Refers to the new prosperous lifestyle Chinese people are encouraged to strive for as middle-class consumers. Coined by Xi Jinping, current president of the People’s Republic of China. 8 This is a pejorative; the official term is wǎngluò pínglùnyuán (网络评论员), i.e. ‘spin doctors’, as we say in English.

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M., 1986. Towards a Methodology for the Human Sciences. In: Emerson, C. & Holquist, M., eds. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M., Holquist, M., & Liapunov, V., 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: University of Texas Press. BBC News, 2011. Egypt Severs Internet Connection Amid Growing Unrest [online]. Available from: www.bbc.com/news/technology-12306041 [Accessed 30th May 2019]. Diamond, L. J., 2010. Liberation Technology. Journal of Democracy, 12(3), 69–83. Dijk, J. V., 2012. The Network Society. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Graeber, D., 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hill, A., 2018. Children Struggle to Hold Pencils Due to Too Much Tech, Doctors Say [online]. The Guardian. Available from: www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/25/ children-struggle-to-hold-pencils-due-to-too-much-tech-doctors-say [Accessed 28th June 2019]. Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2010. The Internet in China [online]. Available from: www.china.org.cn/government/whitepaper/ node_7093508.htm [Accessed 4th July 2019]. McGregor, J., 2012. No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism. Westport, CT: Prospecta Press. Pomfret, J., & Laris, M., 1999. Silent Protest Draws Thousands to Beijing [online]. The Washington Post. Available from: www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/

70 Media in China 04/26/silent-protest-draws-thousands-to-beijing/e0b7ee29-eec6-48ba-b6a6-5cd10 980ec77/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c0ec823928a1 [Accessed 4th July 2019]. Shirk, S. L., 2007. China: Fragile Superpower. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shirk, S. L., 2011. Changing Media, Changing China. New York: Oxford University Press. Standage, T., 1998. The Victorian Internet. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Sudan Tribune, 2011. Sudanese President Urges Supporters to Use Facebook to Overcome Opposition [online]. Available from: www.sudantribune.com/Sudanese-presidenturges,37924 [Accessed 30th May 2019]. Zhao, Y., 2008. Communication in China: Political Economy, Power and Conflict. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

5

The social manifold

Introduction Scholars such as Meng (2011) argue that for a more comprehensive understanding of the political implications of the internet in China, one must examine mediated political communication. Looking only for overtly political communication can ignore other communication forms, such as entertainment, which may still have political consequences despite not appearing explicitly political. Yang Guobin underlines this all-too-common pitfall, writing, ‘Entertainment is often used as a scapegoat for blaming the supposedly apolitical character of Chinese internet culture. The assumption is that if people play online, they are not doing politics’ (2011: 1045). The example presented in this chapter is entertaining and an online viral spoof but has an expressly political undertone; it serves to highlight the role and importance of storytelling in communication and social change. If Chinese society comes under the permanent liminality framework, one would expect to see signs of the Trickster at work, as a liminal environment best suits their character. The Trickster figure is a mythological character with such particular traits as to be recognisable in distinct figures across cultures – from the Coyote in Native American mythology, to the Leprechaun in Irish folklore, to the Monkey King in the ancient Chinese tradition. The Trickster epitomises duality, manifesting contradictory traits such as cunning and clowning, malice and compassion, cleverness and foolishness. The traits of the trickster as a liminal character that seeks and demands transgressing norms and boundaries aid it in disrupting social and cultural values. There are of course different interpretations of the trickster motif, but the main conceptions are consistent and pervasive to such a degree that Grădinaru (2012) argues it would seem as if the trickster has a cultural function, namely to aid in the movement from one state of affairs to another, particularly as a discursive tool for critiquing or subverting dominant or oppressive systems. We examine the potential of the trickster character to serve a cultural function and articulate the incongruency with a social manifold as requiring and facilitating a transition function of liminal characters. Liminal characters can serve as focal points which provide mediation between experiential understanding of the self with wider society. Here, by examining a mythical and virtual Chinese character that is liminal and clearly displays trickster characteristics, we can explore this process. This particular fictional character propagated throughout the Chinese mediascape both domestically and abroad.1 The trickster candidate is called the Grass-Mud Horse (草泥马 Cǎonímǎ).

72 The social manifold

The Grass-Mud Horse In 2009, Baidu – a Chinese internet search engine similar to Google, which holds the largest market share in mainland China at the time of writing – published a list of the ten most popular ‘mythical’ characters that had appeared on Chinese internet forums, mini-blogs, file sharing networks, QQ groups (online chatrooms commonly used through mobile phones) and other digital spaces. The characters appear to have originated as entries in Bǎidù Bǎikē, an online collaborative encyclopaedia similar to the Western Wikipedia platform. The purpose of these ‘false’ (i.e. invented) entries appeared to be satirical in nature, drawing attention to the futility of contemporaneous attempts by authorities to censor profanity and vulgarity on the web.2 The authorities’ official programme of cleaning up the web was widely perceived as an excuse to eliminate not only pornographic material but also material that questioned official state history, party doctrine, policy implementation and so on. The encyclopaedia entries describe the nature of each creature and its environment, often humorously and with implicit references to extreme profanities and sexual acts. One of the most popular of these creatures was the Grass-Mud Horse (草泥马 Cǎonímǎ). The Grass-Mud Horse is presented as a heroic protagonist in the face of constant threat from its arch-rival, the River Crab (河蟹 Héxiè). The Grass-Mud Horses live as a herd in the fictional Ma Le Gobi Desert (马勒戈壁 Mǎlègēbì). The River Crabs share the same environment and threaten the existence of the Grass-Mud Horses by destroying the grassland upon which the latter thrive. The variants are many in both terminology and phrasing, with poems, songs, music videos, cartoons all relaying the mythic Grass-Mud Horse universe. The following is a translation from a popular music video about the Grass-Mud Horse available on most video streaming websites, including YouKu and YouTube. While the lyrics differ between different versions of the song, the antagonism between the defiant Grass-Mud Horse and the encroaching River Crab is always evident, as is the ambiguity of meaning in the language used. The video footage for which these particular lyrics were set to was taken from a 2006 Oxfam commercial seeking sponsors for alpacas as part of its ‘Oxfam Unwrapped’ Christmas gift campaign in the United Kingdom. Produced in conjunction with Mastercard, the advertisement explains that the sponsorship programme helps Peruvian farmers buy and care for alpacas. 在那荒茫美丽马勒戈壁, 有一群草泥马. In the wild and beautiful Ma Le Desert, there is a herd of Grass-Mud Horses. 他们活泼又聪明， 他们调皮又灵敏， They are lively and intelligent. They are mischievous and nimble.

The social manifold 73 他们自由自在生活在那草泥马戈壁， 他们顽强勇敢克服艰苦环境。 They live freely in the Ma Le Desert. They are courageous, tenacious, and overcome the difficult environment. 噢，卧槽的草泥马！ 噢，狂槽的草泥马！ Oh, lying down Grass-Mud Horse! Oh, running wild Grass-Mud Horse! 他们为了卧草不被吃掉 打败了河蟹， 河蟹从此消失草泥马戈壁. They defeated the River Crabs in order to protect their grass land, River Crabs forever disappeared from Ma Le Desert.3 There are multiple meanings present in the story, and the place to start is with the individual names. ‘Grass-Mud Horse’ sounds very like a popular curse in Chinese, though the tones and characters when spoken and written are different, and it is therefore not a true homonym. The Communist Party of China (CCP) can be described as Mother of the People, and therefore the phrase Grass-Mud Horse (‘Fuck Your Mother’) can be suggestive of cursing the CCP. But even just taken as a curse, it resonates with the general populace as one of the most common and severe insults and profanities (not unlike its Englishlanguage equivalent). River Crab (河蟹 Héxiè), meanwhile, sounds like the Chinese term for ‘harmony’ (和谐 héxié) and reminds us of Hu Jintao’s official philosophy for striving for a harmonious society in China. The online censorship of blog entries and articles is often described as the particular article being ‘harmonised’ to bring it into line with the ideals for a harmonious society. Someone described as a Grass-Mud Horse is someone who is savvy and able to circumvent the efforts of censors, the censors themselves being the River Crabs. In a further layer of meaning, in Chinese, the term ‘crab’ can also be used as slang for a bully who exerts power through violence (Qiang 2011: 51). The alternative meanings of the lyrics are quite course and profane, and this adds to the amusement potential of the piece. Guo Yuhua writes that the message is simple: If the government is not messing up, the people won’t do the same; if the upper rank elites don’t torment, the subordinated won’t do the same; if the ‘river crabs’ are not vulgar, the ‘Grass Mud Horse’ won’t be vulgar. (Global Voices 2009)4 Such use of alternative meanings for humorous effect is known as è gǎo (恶搞) – online spoofs or, literally, ‘reckless doing’ (Meng 2010: 503). Guo Yuhua takes up

74 The social manifold James Scott’s idea of ‘weapons of the weak’ in trying to explain the Grass-Mud Horse phenomenon: They are not the powerful, and are not in control of the ‘public transcript’. For them, open, appropriate and free expression has been blocked, and they can only use the ‘weapon of the weak’ to create ‘hidden transcript’. We shouldn’t underestimate this kind of ‘Grass Mud Horse’ expression, as it is a sign of free choice: either to become a silent and tamed goat or to become a ‘brave and stubborn’ Grass Mud Horse. (Global Voices)5 In Western media this particular example has often been portrayed as a direct confrontation between the Chinese government and Chinese netizens (see Meng 2011; Qiang 2011; Tang & Yang 2011). Such a portrayal, however, is an overreaction; it is, moreover, indicative of the starting position from which much progressive discourse proceeds, resting upon the inevitability of democracy and the liberative capacity of technology. I suggest instead a more nuanced narrative in which the Grass-Mud Horse is seen as a representation of the ability to overcome mechanical censorship and thus highlighting the futility, and ultimately the annoyance, of such a system. The existence of the Grass-Mud Horse is ultimately dependent on the censors/River Crab, without whom the joke is void of meaning and the phrase merely a crude play on words. Following the appearance of this song and its subsequent popularity across the internet in China, scholars and commentators began to pick up on the power of the Grass-Mud Horse as a symbol. An example of responses includes artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s photo of himself jumping naked with one hand in the air, with the other hand holding a toy Grass-Mud Horse to censor his genitalia. As a symbol, the Grass-Mud Horse has gained political and commercial capital while reaching a wide audience. The Grass-Mud Horse has become an important symbol for protest and dissatisfaction with the authorities and with censorship, even outside Mainland China, as evidenced in Hong Kong, where activists used the symbol when protesting planned changes to the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) underground system. Tang and Yang (2011) examine the symbolic power of this internet sensation and persuasively argue that many factors need to be in place before such an otherwise contingent cultural product could become so powerful. Specifically, there needed to be a groundswell of support and sentiment before the song came to be in order for it to become so popular. This is an important aspect, and one that is sometimes elided in favour of more hasty discussions of the song as an example of dissidence and the liberating capacity of the internet. Indeed, Tang and Yang reference an earlier version of the Grass-Mud Horse story that, for different reasons, did not reach anywhere near the popularity of the contemporaneous version. In their words, the Grass-Mud Horse is a crystallisation of pre-existing sentiment, one that suits its cultural and linguistic context and thus becomes a successful theme. According to these authors, the Grass-Mud Horse takes advantage of the

The social manifold 75 communicative capacity of the internet as a communications technology, but its origins and power are ultimately not derived from the internet. They write, [T]he emergence of the horse and its symbolic power and social effects must be understood dialectically – the horse draws its power from the social context and at the same time it opens up a space for a whole new set of resistant discourses to emerge and flourish. (ibid.: 667) As Tang and Yang argue, the Grass-Mud Horse is not specifically anti-communism or anti-party or anti-government. It is an expression of negative sentiment towards an identifiable experience in which the system impinges on one’s expression of self by enforcing one voice over many possible voices, a single meaning over multiple meanings and possible interpretations; the feeling of a system that is singular and totalising, eliminating ambiguity, ambivalence, difference and the possibility of interpretation. The story of the Grass-Mud Horse is primarily a manifestation of understandings of these experiences of censorship and surveillance on the internet in China. This is a theme that can be unpacked with the use of Walter Benjamin’s insights on storytelling and art.

Becoming through mediated events Let us begin with some precepts about communism which are particularly relevant to the case at hand. Communism has as its goal a utopia in which all are equal. To achieve such an aim, all must act in accordance with one another; everyone must be in harmony with everyone else. If different groups or factions act in different ways, they are not acting faithfully in the pursuit of the final goal. Communism (in a theoretical utopian sense) cannot allow a plurality of voices, as it would be an affront to the ideology; for example there cannot be multiple unions representing the same cohort, so in China there is one union for each cohort of workers. This enforces the need to remove the subjective experiences of the people. The ‘I’ of the subject is thus eliminated and replaced with a meta-narrative – the official history, the party’s story. This one story or history becomes official policy, acting as ‘Truth’ and guiding the populace in their march towards destiny, their progressive development towards utopia and the end of history. In the official story – history as told by the party – life, the lived experiences of individual people in all their diversity and variety, is reduced and disparaged as ‘tradition’, stagnant and cultic, to be set aside in favour of the harmonious official story. With such an official line on life and history, interpretation of individual lived experiences is removed, and lived experiences become explained by official doctrine or lack of political consciousness. However, all of this can be written with ease because it is itself an abstraction, and it is certainly not the case in contemporary China. Society resists such easy descriptors. Looking at increasing technological complexity as progress and as an aid to social progress obscures the role that communications technology in-and-of-itself

76 The social manifold plays in social change. This has led to a large field of literature on the theme of China-in-transition, positioning China as abnormal or deficient according to the view of linear historical development to which the notion of ‘progress’ generally subscribes. In this understanding, China’s lack of democratic credentials is seen as lagging unusually far behind the pace of economic and technological development – ‘as an orientalist despotic or communistic totalitarian deviation from some transcendental liberal democratic “norm”’ (Zhao 2008: 49) (see Chapters 1 and 2). Exploring the internet through a predetermined democratisation lens (Meng 2010: 501) exacerbates this mis-focused attention on the internet as public sphere. As Yang notes, seemingly apolitical activities such as these give the internet its cultural content. . . . As the values, behaviour and practices associated with these activities merge into everyday life, they become a central part of contemporary culture. Dismissing them as ‘shallow infotainment’ in favour of rational-critical debate and deliberation is problematic. Implicitly, this view uses the Habermasian notion of online discourse as the normative standard to measure online activities. It not only ignores the importance of emotion in public life, but at its worst reduces the emotional to the irrational and runs the danger of pathologizing online behaviour. (2011: 1046) It is hoped that by proposing a framework incorporating the dialogical importance of storytelling as a primordial means of communication (as envisaged by Benjamin) will help to facilitate a re-examining and refocusing of how communication relates to social change and what role technology might play in such change, while also acknowledging the ways in which the democratisation lens has previously coloured communication studies on contemporary China. The Grass-Mud Horse presents a narrative of netizens’ experiences of officials’ interference with the online community. The most important aspect of the GrassMud Horse phenomenon, I would argue, is that the story allegorically delivers an understanding of an experience that many netizens may not have directly experienced themselves. Experiences of the negative side of the communication system (censorship and surveillance) are represented in a format that allows others who may or may not share the experiences to understand its meanings and values in relation to their own position. They can then, in turn, come to understand their own position within the narrative and thus within the narrative of life, the universe and everything. And this story must be told in a manner that at once escapes the alternative absolutist narrative of the totalitarian monologue yet also demonstrates the pathology of that same dominant and unforgiving meta-narrative. The Grass-Mud Horse lives on the threshold, with many possible voices playing on the boundaries of meaningful language by flirting with censorship, blasphemy and humour all at once. Let us turn to Benjamin for further insight into the work of the story; we note that there are many variants of the story of the Grass-Mud Horse, and this is

The social manifold 77 important; all living stories have variants, as the story is reproduced not only to convey new ideas and messages but to match the audience and the times, but the frame of the story allows it to carry the content in its various guises: it maintains the resonance of the story through the ability to reinterpret anew relevant meaning. The story provides the element of transmission as the storyteller’s memory seeks to resonate with the listener; in fact, Benjamin refers to ‘transmission’ as ‘tradition’ (1968) – the story survives death and simultaneously presupposes its community. There are several important takeaways from Benjamin for understanding the Grass-Mud Horse. That the Grass-Mud Horse draws its power from its social context has led to the emergence of the following phrase as the ‘first law of Chinse cyberpolitics’, coined by Xiao Qiang, editor in chief of China Digital Times: ‘Where there are River-Crabs there are Grass-Mud Horses, or, where there is censorship there is resistance’ (‘那里有河蟹，那里就有草泥马’ – Nàlǐ yǒu Héxiè, nàlǐ jiù yǒu Cǎonímǎ. Xiao 2009). The use of the internet has greatly increased the communicative space available to many individuals. However, this is true only insofar as there is someone different with whom to communicate: if two people are saying the same thing, there is no true communication taking place. The extent to which the internet can act as a catalyst for social and political transformation does not rest in the technology but in the transformation of discourse at the threshold of two domains, where ‘meaning is both created and found . . . in the interaction between “inner” image and “outer” narrative structure. . . . [P]owerful narratives, “frame” and “make intelligible” inner contents through dialogical relationship’ (Rowland 2006: 294). Following Benjamin, the Grass-Mud Horse – as a story – communicates experience like good storytelling should. The experience the story works to communicate is that of censorship and oppression under a threatening force. This threatening force is only indirectly (if at all) the Communist Party of China; rather, the threatening force is the refusal to acknowledge the alternative voice, the subjective voice that speaks out of tune. The story tells us of this experience: one life or one voice being threatened by another. This has two results. Firstly, people who share this experience see something of themselves in the story and identify with it. This reinvigorates the strength of the story in its relevance for the current social context and community. Secondly, those who have not experienced the threatening force can come to understand this experience through interpretation of the narrative, by reading the play on words, the hidden code that avoids censorship by obeying the rules. This is the importance of storytelling: communicating experience not only to those who have shared the experience but also, more importantly, to those who have not, so that these latter can come to understand something of an unknown experience portrayed by the story. This explanation is both specific to the Grass-Mud Horse but also generally applicable, which will be shown with further case studies in the next chapter. It is not the content that is singularly important but rather the story as a whole which marries content and form in such a way that it can resonate with its

78 The social manifold community (Benjamin 2006: 367). The practice of storytelling, its activity is part of the form of the story. Thus, the storyteller or communications technology are both potential modes by which a story may be transmitted. Storytelling provides understanding to those who may not have particular social experiences, and those people within a community or those people who seek entry to one can do so from understanding via the stories of that community in whatever forms they take, understanding this othered experience and also, more generally, understanding the expectation of their position and place within the state, the world, the community, as articulated through the story and the community it ‘presupposes’. Technology, which according to Benjamin obfuscates history and abstracts knowledge from experience (see Chapter 2) nevertheless remains a lattice structure through which communication can supersede instantaneous reproduction through dialogical participation with the audience (see immanent overcoming later in the chapter). The Grass-Mud Horse thrives in the communications technology environment and certainly has a story to tell that would not be possible in the traditional manner of spoken activity. The Grass-Mud Horse relies to a large degree on its anonymous and fictional nature, residing within digital technologies for communication. Benjamin is aggrieved by what he describes as the fall in value of experience represented or evidenced by the lack of good storytellers (2006: 362). For Benjamin, a storyteller is someone who uses skill or craft to relay experiences to a listener or audience via narrative. A storyteller can offer careful representations of humans’ relationship to their experience. The idea of experience is central here, as across cultures, this kind of experiential understanding is frequently held above that acquired via rote learning or explanation (Benjamin 2006: 378). Why is this experiential knowledge important? And why has it historically (and still contemporarily) been valued above understanding gained via explanation, abstract reasoning or education? The answer would seem to lie in the interpretative potential of experience versus the ‘dictatorial’ perspective of explanation. Whatever one experiences in life can always be revisited and reinterpreted in light of new experiences and thoughts. The ‘truth’ of an event is not nearly as important as the meaning derived – that is, interpreted – from the event. When we come to understand something via education or explanation, ‘truth’ is held up in a tyrannical manner, by which the knowledge we gain is legitimised. When ‘truth’ is held up in such an omnipotent way, the communicability of experience is damaged, as one’s personal experiences become subject to judgement as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on the basis of this or that ‘fact’. The meaning of the individual’s experience is then weakened in favour of knowing the ‘truth’ of an event, which objective ‘fact’ can, in reality, never be reached. Storytelling communicates experience and understanding in the form of wisdom which carries down through the ages. For Benjamin, this is the case regardless of how the content of the story might change or its method of telling be transformed, so long as the core message or communicability of the experience remains comprehensible. In this understanding, it is necessary that the content

The social manifold 79 and method of transmission change, so as to keep the story relevant to the social context of the present day. Changing forms in this manner enables the story to better hold and access its interpretative capacity. The story (tale, song, poem, image, figure etc.) must contain an interpretative capacity so that we can still recognise the story and the relationship it narrates between ourselves and our social existence despite changes in our experience of that relationship. Both the interpretative capacity of a story and our ability to comprehend the meanings it communicates need some explanatory framework so that the influence or impact of technology on these processes might be elaborated. And what of the role of the trickster regarding the communicability of experience that Benjamin espouses as the virtue of storytelling?

The social manifold While conceptions of self may vary across cultures and throughout time, there remains a relationship between what we might call an ‘individual’ (regardless of the kind of conception of self) and a ‘society’ (that collectivity of individuals operating in an interdependent, complex fashion). This dialogical relationship between many beings, many experiencing selves and the total social fabric is referred to here as the social manifold. The social manifold can be defined as the encompassing space between the actual contextualisation of societal meaning-formation and the perceived or imagined social context for societal meaning-formation. Meaningformation refers to the understanding of oneself as a social being – a multi-variant interpenetrating social phenomenon. Within the social manifold, the interaction between an individual and their society is not direct; that is, the individual cannot comprehend the totality of their own society but can only come to know it through the culture’s signs and symbols. The transmission of a society’s values and wisdom (mythic experience) takes place across an unequal plane: from the vast complexity of an entire social system and its repertoire of knowledge, mores and norms to the comparatively limited faculties of its individual members, groups and strata. The extreme variation and complexity of the social manifold must be condensed, skimmed, fragmented, packaged and translated, moving from the world out there to one’s own inner world and understanding of one’s own place, own time in one’s community. This movement, social process, requires an arena so that such a transition can take place; a space whereby the relative incongruency of one’s experience interplays with the expectations and perceptions of wider social values and norms. In such a manner, the incongruency creates a type of natural attraction, a pull for the lack of resonance to be resolved. All that is missing is a focal point within such an arena to act as a conduit for multiple meanings through recognition of an experiential congruence. Via interpretation, the meaning is recognised as it pertains to the self and the social. Understanding the place one occupies in one’s own narrative of life requires not so much an explanation – such as a guide in traditional rites of passage – but an interpretative process that seeks resonance between one’s experiences and social expectations, a process that expresses,

80 The social manifold indeed authenticates, the potential for co-existence in terms of one’s own experience. This mode of communication must be open-ended and interpretative rather than explanatory, Bakhtin explains that: with explanation there is only one consciousness, one subject; with comprehension there are two consciousnesses and two subjects . . . therefore explanation has no dialogic aspects. . . . Understanding is always dialogic to some degree. (Bakhtin, 1994: 111) The extent to which one’s own experience is congruent with the expectations of ones’ society (and vice versa) is relative because the relationship is dynamic and recursive; it is dialogical. The incongruent spaces once occupied by a suitable conduit may dialogically weave experience and experiential understanding through identity and social knowledge. This space makes possible the kind of intergenerational wisdom and knowledge that society generates from larger aggregates of lived lives and their experiences. Through communication, experiences are presented and re-presented so that others can come to understand their meaning and values in relation to their own position in any given society. But what of the conduit? Can we say this then is the cultural function of liminal characters, and in our example of our Grass-Mud Horse trickster? It is this process that we can see in the story of the Grass-Mud Horse, whereby knowledge of censorship and political authoritarianism is communicated within the confines set out by that same censorship and authoritarianism. The portrayal of such political experience in the form of a mythic animal transmits understanding of the experience to others only once they interpret the representation relative to their own experiences and the experiences of others. In other words, they can come to understand their own situation relative to their socio-cultural and historically bound context within the social manifold.6 This is similar to the power of art: it is, in a sense, beyond truth; it is meaningful – if not necessarily factual – to the living tradition of a society. It is useful to look at parallel examples to see the kind of dynamics at work within the social manifold. In describing the method of language acquisition in children, Lotman invokes the term ‘intertextuality’,7 On the basis of some contextual-situational equivalence (situations: ‘good’, ‘pleasant’, ‘bad’, ‘dangerous’ etc.) the child establishes a correspondence between some texts familiar and comprehensible to him in ‘his’ language and the texts of ‘adults’ (for example on the principle ‘incomprehensible but pleasant,’ or ‘incomprehensible but frightening’). In such a translation – of one whole text by another whole text – the child discovers an extraordinary abundance of ‘superfluous’ words in ‘adult’ texts. The act of translation [from the point of view of the child] is accompanied by a semantic reduction of the [adult] text. (Lotman 1976: 302)

The social manifold 81 There is not a one-to-one equivalence here between language learning and communication and experience, but there is similarity. As the child comes to know the world through the signs of the parent – by reducing the complexity and number of signs, thereby enabling understanding but with a narrower scope of meaning – so too does the adult come to know their world and society at large via communication. Meaning carries across an unequal place from a more complex faculty to a lesser complex faculty. This process of intertextuality resonates with another pedagogical process: Vygotskiĭ (1978) proposed a ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) for understanding a particular process of intergenerational learning. The ZPD in this regard refers to the disparity between the physical ability of a child to do something and the child’s knowledge of how to do something. With guidance, children can be shown how to utilise their own capacity to act. The gap, then, between adult/ teacher and child or that between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ levels of ability is called the zone of proximal development, defined in the following way by Vygotskiĭ: the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers. (Vygotskiĭ 1978: 86) In both of these theories, the similarity with the earlier discussion is the process of communication across an unequal plane of relative complexity. Whether intertextuality in the case of Lotman or scaffolding in the case of Vygotskiı̆ , there is a process of transmission from ‘higher’ to ‘lower’ level, from adult to child. There are more of these processes at work – this should be self-evident – and examples are ripe from media which may itself as a form (techno-social) facilitate resolution required by the social manifold. Writing on the social transformation of contemporary Ireland, Keohane and Kuhling phrase the meeting of different social forces thus: The process of sharing local and the global, community and society, tradition and modernity, are not forms of life that supersede one another in linear historical progress, but . . . exist contemporaneously and interpenetrate with one another, collide and collude with one another. (2005: 76) The proposed social manifold is an interpenetratable, overlapping field that actualises, makes manifest, the relative incongruency of one’s perceptions and expectations (based on what they have experienced) with social perceptions and expectations (derived from the social body). Incongruent spaces open up when liminal characters come into focus. This model can offer insight into a particular process of cultural transmission; amidst the overdetermined social forces at play, it is inevitable that our experiences may not fully resonate with our expectations

82 The social manifold nor our expectations with those of wider society. This results in an incongruity between our own personal experiences of our society and the wider norms and values of our society. Across this discrepancy some form of transition must necessarily take place in order for cultural transmission and social and individual development to take place. It may be evident that the terms transition and manifold have mathematical relevance, and an example can help illustrate both the reason and the framework being described. The term manifold refers to topological space that cannot be perfectly represented in three dimensions; for example, the three-dimensional world cannot be represented accurately in two dimensions (i.e. on a map) unless two charts are used each emanating from one overlapping and shared point. The manifold, in its representation, requires two sub-sets with at least one transition point. The transition point allows for the communication – establishes congruence – between the two sub-sets of the whole. This can manifest in at least two forms: (1) the communication of a new understanding for one’s own experiences and (2) the ability for experiential knowledge to be shared and understood by those who have not undergone that experience. This process of communication is one that is greatly facilitated by communications technology and liminal characters. The process of condensing, packaging and representing an experientially derived social system uses liminal characters as a vector once they move to visibility within the incongruent spaces peeled from the social manifold, that is to say, when they come to be cognised as representative of experiential incongruency. The weaving and folding of a multitude of experiential qualities into a consummating representation requires special characters that can embody and endure the stigma or fame of such a juxtapositioning against societal norms and values, but subsequently they can serve as a conduit for another to perceive, co-experience and empathise with in an act of societal congruence through new experiential awareness and understanding. So the proposal is that this may be a cultural function of the trickster and other liminal characters. Like the trickster in our example, liminal and, indeed, peripheral characters can act as a focal point for surrounding social narratives to converge, striking like lightning in a charged atmosphere to illuminate cognition of one’s own experiences with and with-in a wider social frame; a frame that is open for interpretation rather than enforced explanation. Liminal characters such as the trickster serve a social and psychological function by drawing on and even transgressing the limits of one’s own experience and the values and norms of their society. Such liminal personas act as transition points between the wider changing flux of social relations and the instant of individual self-cognition and understanding. Liminal characters may serve, indeed function, as this transition point between our cognitive capacity and the manifest social complexity of wider dynamic systems of social experience and knowledge. The Grass-Mud Horse is identifiable as a trickster, and as such is a liminal character; as a trickster entity, it operates through norms and expectations that transgress both societal and individual norms – evident in the play on words and

The social manifold 83 double meaning that not only transgress censorship (societal) but also linguistic decency (individual). Importantly it is not the case that such a trickster be imitated; rather, they should only act as a heuristic cultural function to aid in the perceiver to re-evaluate their own experiential understanding against that of their communities. By framing itself against and in spite of limits the trickster offers new coordinates by which one can reassess and judge one’s own experiences. It is the potential for interpretation within such incongruent spaces, facilitated by communications technology that allows individuals to recognise and renegotiate their relation to their lived experiences of life and society. The unequal plane at work within the social manifold between the social world of signs and symbols (intergenerational knowledge) and self-knowledge as a social being must be maintained and transversed through ‘the pedagogical activity of the social in a dialogic simultaneity relating to itself in time’ (Holquist 2002: 83). As the self cannot achieve a total sense of self or of society from an outside perspective, the social manifold shears and incongruent spaces open, providing interpretative arenas for realigning the signs and symbols of the community by which the self gains social identity and understanding anew. By overcoming the limitations of one’s own perspective via negotiation of the presented characteristics of one’s socio-temporal circumstance, vested in a liminal character, the self and society can gain experiential understanding of their time and place. The shearing and opening within the social manifold enables the unfolding of a culture’s future and for cultural transmission to take place across and among members of the community.

Conclusion The future of a culture should be considered an open-ended process with no goal in terms of trying to achieve an end but instead a continuous dynamic mode of self-representation at a societal level. Where in Lotman’s language acquisition there is intertextuality and in Vygotskiĭ’s ZPD there is scaffolding, there are elements of both at work in the spaces of incongruency that come to be occupied by liminal characters. Within these spaces, the techno-social has a role; technology plays a role in facilitating and part-contextualising the representation, even where the representation is itself bound by socio-cultural and historical conditions. The marriage of medium and message ensures a particular frame for interpretation is at work (scaffolding) for the content to be negotiated; to put it another way, the content is contextualised to a certain degree by the communications technology in use. Through liminal characters operating as a focal point for resonance between the individual and society within the social manifold, an individual’s experiential understanding can develop in spite of the auto-framing of perception by the limitations of one’s own perspective. That is to say, the limitations of one’s own experience can be overcome by the new signs and symbols made available to them by the liminal figure. This is made possible by looking to the mirroring of social life as conveyed by the liminal figure and generated within the transitory

84 The social manifold arena that serves both as a congruent and incongruent space. Liminal characters make possible the crossing of the plane between what one can know oneself and what society can teach, so that the individual develops as a social member and cognisant of their role as a social being. Here, the disparity that social life generates between one generation and another (but also horizontally between groups) is made evident through the relative incongruency between those same groups within the manifold. The disparity itself generates momentum for resolution as social beings require and rely on social congruence amongst members. This transitory space within the social manifold enables societies to generate their own cultural identity along with their own social development in a process of unfolding and unfurling from within. If in permanent liminality we are seeking, striving for the path out, then it stands to reason this striving will be reflected in our popular culture if only we know how to identify it. If the conditions of our society have become unfixed, and things are fluid and upset, (not adequately unfolding and unfurling so to speak), then we should also see greater incongruency between our expectations and those of society, between our experiences and the experiences of others. From this chapter we have identified one liminal character at work in China, a trickster called the Grass-Mud Horse, but there are many more. We will see in the next chapter that the liminal character does not always need to be a trickster, which will entice future questions about distinctions and roles of different types of liminal characters. For example the trickster would certainly prefer to be mistaken for an authoritative figure rather than a mere heuristic device, and the misidentification of the trickster as an authority is an endemic problem of our times (see Szakolczai 2015; Horvath 2013). However, we have now a working proposal that can explain why we may see liminal characters at work in our popular culture, gaining an authority that would not normally be afforded to them – marginalised and peripheral figures who arrive in the mediated arenas, as will tricksters and jokers who can take advantage of our search for cultural and social stability and, indeed, vitality.

Notes 1 A ‘mediascape’ refers to the horizon of images available via media from one’s subjective perspective, or the totality of available images from a given vantage point – temporal, cultural etc. The term was coined by Arjun Appadurai (1996). 2 The particular government bodies in question were the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP). 3 Author’s translation. 4 Guo Yuhua Global Voices 2009; original text in Chinese, with translation available from https://globalvoices.org/2009/03/02/china-more-on-grass-mud-horse uploaded on 2009/03/02 5 Guo Yuhua Global Voices 2009; original text in Chinese, with translation available from https://globalvoices.org/2009/03/02/china-more-on-grass-mud-horse uploaded on 2009/03/02

The social manifold 85 6 Koselleck (2002) refers to successful realization of one’s experience as ‘historical consciousness’, Bakhtin uses the term transgredience (transgradientsvo) to describe the successful dialogic representation of the totality of one’s societal participation. 7 The term ‘intertextuality’ was coined by Julia Kristeva (1980) to replace ‘intersubjectivity’, in response to Bakhtin and de Saussure.

Bibliography Appadurai, A., 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M., 1990 [1924]. The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art. In: Holquist, M., & Liapunov, V., eds. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M., 1994. Speech Genre and Other Late Essays. Translated by McGee, V. W., edited by Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. Austin: University of Texas. Benjamin, W., 2006. The Storyteller. In: Hale, D. J., ed. The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory 1900–2000. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Benjamin, W., & Arendt, H., 1986. Illuminations. New York: Schocken. Grădinaru, I. A., 2012. The Ways of the Trickster. Meaning, Discourse and Cultural Blasphemy. Argumentum: Journal the Seminar of Discursive Logic, Argumentation Theory & Rhetoric, 10(2), 85–96. Holquist, M., 2002. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Horvath, A., 2013. Modernity and Charisma. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Keohane, & Kuhling, 2005. Collison Culture: Transformations in Everyday Life in Ireland. Dublin: Liffey Press. Koselleck, R., 2002. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. T. S. Presner et al. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kristeva, J., 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 66. Lam, O., 2009. China: More on Grass Mud Horse [online]. Global Voices. Available from: https://globalvoices.org/2009/03/02/china-more-on-grass-mud-horse/ [Accessed 4th June 2019]. Lotman, J. M., 1976. On the Reduction and Unfolding of Sign Systems. In: Baran, H., ed. Semiotics and Structuralism: Readings from the Soviet Union. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 301–309. Meng, B., 2010. Moving Beyond Democratization: A Thought Piece on the China Internet Research Agenda. International Journal of Communication, 4, 501–508. Meng, B., 2011. From Steamed Bun to Grass Mud Horse: E Gao as Alternative Political Discourse on the Chinese Internet. Global Media and Communication, 7(1), 33–51. Rowland, S., 2006. Jung, the Trickster Writer, or What Literary Research Can Do for the Clinician. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 51, 285–299. Standage, T., 1998. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-Line Pioneers. New York: Walker and Company. Sudan Tribune, 2011. Sudanese President Urges Supporters to Use Facebook to Overcome Opposition [online]. Available from: www.sudantribune.com/Sudanese-president-urges, 37924 [Accessed 30th May 2019]. Szakolczai, A., 2015. Comedy and the Public Sphere: The Rebirth of Theatre as Comedy and the Genealogy of the Modern Public. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

86 The social manifold Tang, L., & Yang, P., 2011. Symbolic Power and the Internet: The Power of a “Horse”. Media, Culture and Society, 33(5), 675–691. Vygotskiĭ, L. S., & Cole, M., 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wark, M., 1994. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Xiao, Q., 2009. Baidu’s Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked (1) (Updated) [online]. China Digital Times. Available from: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/ 2009/04/baidus-internal-monitoring-and-censorship-document-leaked/ [Accessed 9th June 2019]. Xiao, Q., 2011. The Battle for the Chinese Internet. Journal of Democracy, 22(2), 47–61. Yang, G., 2011. Technology and Its Contents: Issues in the Study of the Chinese Internet. Journal of Asian Studies, 70(4), 1043–1050. Zhao, Y., 2008. Communication in China: Political Economy, Power, and Conflict. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

6

Incongruent dreams

Introduction Media entertainment can sometimes be considered merely frivolous and not worthy of being seen as a meaningful social activity that impacts upon social change and policy creation. We saw this argument in Chapter 4, with Shirk arguing that with greater flows and access to information the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be forced to act in a way incompatible with either on the one hand the needs of domestic governance to meet public desire or on the other the political needs of the CCP itself. These arguments usually focus on media in traditional fields considered scholarly important: economics, business, finance, politics, warfare and so on. However, this chapter looks at media entertainment to see how increased communicative capacity might effect social change. In examining two immensely popular Chinese TV shows, we will see that entertainment is in fact an extremely useful site for social analysis. This chapter offers an alternative perspective on media entertainment as it relates to technology in contemporary China using the interpretative framework outlined in Chapter 5 and shows how the increasing liberalisation of the Chinese media does not equate with increasing liberalisation of society. It shows some of the social dynamics at play. We begin with a general history of media in China, placing this within the context of wider-ranging debates about the nature of technology, specifically those examining the changing relationships between means and ends as new technology becomes increasingly embedded within our everyday lives. We then examine in detail two reality television shows, Super Girl (超级女声 Chāojí Nǚshēng) and Let’s Go! Oriental Angel (加油！东方天使 Jiāyóu! Dōngfāng tiānshǐ). The economic reform by Deng Xiaoping allowed newspapers, magazine and television and radio stations to support themselves by selling advertisements and competing in a slowly opening marketplace. The economic rationale behind this softening towards commercialisation included the reduction of government expenditure on media provision, an increase in skilled jobs and a desire for the country as a whole to reach the technical media standards of other developed nations. Each of these market sectors has seen profound transformation over the last 30 years, resulting in a tension between the desires of commercial media and the need for state regulation and governance. In the 1980s, advertising profits continually increased, until they became the main source of income for television

88 Incongruent dreams stations. By 1990, China Central Television (CCTV) took in 100 million RMB from advertising revenue. In 2001, CCTV’s income had increased fiftyfold, to 5 billion RMB (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012). This change in policy ensured that broadcasters were making far more via advertising than government subsidies, and the government subsequently decided to require a share of broadcasters’ revenue in order to allow broadcasters access to the post-1980 market. The government realised just how lucrative the Chinese media market could be. Broadcast time is now so valuable that unless programs can demonstrate good ratings, they are moved to less popular channels or cancelled entirely. From a libertarian perspective it is enticing to conclude that the proliferation of new digital technologies might do for China something akin to what the printing press did for Europe. To suggest technology is democratising concerns the rise of technocrats or technocratic oligarchies, but this phenomenon is a result of the regulatory activities and preliminary positions rather than technology in and of itself. One can accept that every new technology undergoes a period of initiation whereby it is phased in, and people educate themselves as to its use before any technology can be considered ubiquitous. It is often only once the technology becomes ubiquitous that regulation appears as an attractive activity for the state or oligarchy to ensure or create some power dynamic; for example, a state television licence could only be introduced once a majority of the population possessed a television, thereby making it financially viable to do so. As such, the extent to whether a technocratic elite will arise depends much more on the social dynamics that technology is introduced into rather than dependent on the technology itself. Competition for market share amongst TV companies has placed pressures on screen time for educational programmes and programmes covering traditional aspects of Chinese society, such as Peking Opera, to which members of the younger, media-savvy generation do not feel strongly connected. Television remains the most widespread and influential medium in China today, especially for poorer and less educated demographics (Lull 2013). However, the internet is rapidly replacing TV as a news and educational source, particularly for the younger generation. With younger people moving away from TV news, TV companies focus on entertainment over other programming; this is especially true outside of the main state broadcaster, which gains greater budgetary support for less popular programming as it is perceived a responsibility of the state to provide for such cultural programming (ibid.) than non-state-owned media companies. Chinese society has experienced a proliferation of entertainment shows that foster creativity, dialogue and drama; some have even led to claims of prophecy fulfilment, that technology is indeed ‘liberating’ China. Such light entertainment shows may not seem political to the tired eyes in America and Europe, but in a dictatorship anxious about social unease, everything is political. Competition and innovation are leading to increasing problems for the Politburo, and shows like Super Girl and Let’s Go! Oriental Angel introduce young people to the idea of choice in a desired victory: i.e. the democratic vote. Super Girl even became an issue for discussion for the Standing Committee of the Politburo (Shirk 2011).

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High competition between television stations is driving this shift towards entertainment formats that can capture market share while reducing labour costs. This is a driving force in media in Western nations as well; by attempting to appeal to the broadest common denominator within any demographic sector, broadcasters feel they can achieve higher ratings. In China, TV reaches a larger proportion of the populace, including those who may not be able to read or afford to buy higher quality publications. By producing more sensationalist tabloid style content, broadcasters can sometimes capture audiences from their competitors. These factors lead to a dangerous mix for state regulators, who are trying to prevent sensationalist stories by broadcasters, who in turn, due to the market environment, are motivated to capture larger audiences. While it falls on the state to finance and maintain those programmes that are deemed beneficial to society, such as cultural and educational programmes, the commercial programming churns out more versions of China’s Got Talent or Chinese Idol or Voice of China, and so on. It also falls to the state not only to guard against sensitive items such as views on Taiwan, Hong Kong etc., but also to prevent the media spiralling to the extreme sensationalism that can occur between rival stations. The state does this via the Propaganda Department, which issues guidelines on all major topics to ensure no conflicting reports and to help maintain a harmonious perspective conducive to a harmonious society. It is up to individual stations to ‘voluntarily’ meet the guidelines issued – voluntary to the extent that one can lose their job if the guidelines are not met adequately or even be imprisoned if one is deemed to have transgressed these guidelines. However, there is always space for interpretation, and clever editors can take advantage of that space in order to capture a larger market share. Indeed, the South China Morning Post has gained a fearless reputation for some of its daring front pages in the past. An extreme example of divergence in print reporting is the terrible train accident in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed, one rearending the other. The disparity between tabloid press and state press was startling, with tabloid covers featuring large colour images of the train wreckage while state media covered a recent military ceremony. All papers would have received the same advice not to sensationalise reportage at risk of inflaming public anger over perceived rail mismanagement. Possible sanctions include the removal of chief editors from their posts to the suspension of printing or closure of offices. However, uneven regulation has led to cutthroat practices amongst rival media groups. By law, local television stations have a right to broadcast popular television dramas before they are broadcast nationally via satellite. Tactics for gaining market share can violate such rules without ramifications, given the right conditions. In 2005, Zhejiang, Anhui, Yunan, and Shandong satellite TV stations bought the rights to a highly anticipated TV drama called If God Has Affections (天若有情 Tiānruòyǒuqíng). By contract, these satellite stations were not permitted to broadcast the drama until the Chinese New Year of 2006, in order to allow local television stations to broadcast the programme first. However, seeking to capitalise profits by being the first to show the programme, the satellite stations aired the show at the end of 2005, causing huge financial losses to local broadcasters, detrimentally affecting their viewing figures and advertising revenue (de

90 Incongruent dreams Kloet & Landsberger 2012). Due to the lack of consolidated broadcast rules and regulations, as well as conflicts of interest between different broadcasters and media organisations, there is little compensation for losers in such a competition, even when contracts are explicitly broken. This provides an idea of the challenges and complexities facing the media environment in contemporary China. The idea of stringent regulation grows more and more difficult due both to increasing global connectivity and to having started from such a low regulatory base. For all the dictatorial control the CCP might want, there are clear technical and regulatory challenges in the digital economy – challenges that render strict regulation very difficult, if not altogether impossible. Some have argued that the rise of entertainment formats in China is a sign of radical change in the power relations amongst the media and political culture (Cui 2005; Lynch 2005), with others claiming that entertainment is a new public sphere (Wu 2011). Still others have argued that these shows serve to normalise the status quo (Jian & Liu 2009; Meng 2009). These themes will now be explored through an exploration of the nature of two reality talent shows, Super Girl (2004–2011) and Let’s Go! Oriental Angel (2009).

Super Girl China’s broadcasting system is divided into geographical levels, including national, provincial and municipal. For decades, CCTV was the only player in the national television arena. It is the official national broadcaster, and it is better resourced than the provincial and municipal stations, both financially and politically. Provincial stations are expected to focus on local programming (Wu 2011). With the introduction of more capable telecommunications and access to satellite, competition among broadcasters increased, and as discussed in the introduction to this chapter, advertising took on increasing importance as a source of revenue, allowing both advertisers and the broadcasters they funded to access larger audiences. Hunan Satellite Television (HSTV) is a provincial TV station which has led the field in terms of updating and modernising media entertainment within China. HSTV initially introduced the talent search format under the name Happy Voice Boys (快乐男声 Kuàilè Nánshēng) in 2003, taking its lead from similar shows in the West such as Pop Idol, created by British network ITV in 2001. The following year, in 2004, HSTV repackaged its offering as Super Girl in an effort to better capture the national audience. In 2005, for sponsorship reasons, the full title of the show became The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest (蒙牛酸酸乳超级女声Měngniú Suānsuānrǔ Chāojí Nǚshēng). For ease of writing, the shortened version, Super Girl, is used throughout this chapter. Super Girl was a sensation in China, a fresh and modern entertainment programme that instantly attracted huge viewing numbers and made it one of the most successful shows of all time in China. In the second season of the show, national viewing numbers regularly reached the tens of millions, with the final episode of the 2005 season drawing an audience of 400 million people (Meng 2009).

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Preliminary regional competitions attracted over 150,000 female contestants, where each were given 30 second slots over five rounds to showcase their talents, whether singing, dancing etc. Super Girl offered viewers a vote to select their favourite contestant. The winner of the 2005 episode drew great interest from politicians, academics and the public alike; Li Yuchun gained fame in large part due to her androgynous appearance, with critics noting she won despite a poor singing voice. Li did not win because of her capabilities as a singer but because she demonstrated an authentic self for public consumption. Meng writes, ‘This authentic subjectivity of Li Yuchun is constructed through the combination of public scrutiny and self-disclosure’ (2009: 264). This construction is not an inauthentic media appearance but a dialogical manifestation, a shared realisation of a changing society, transgressing previous limits and permeating what was once stable. Li’s appearance did not fit with China’s traditional notions of femininity (Meng 2009). She retains an androgynous appearance, not adapting her image to more traditional ideals of feminine beauty, thereby maintaining the idea that she is true to herself. This unique attribute, differentiating herself from the mass-produced copycat images, sets her out as a liminal character. She waits on the threshold of gender identity, not conforming culturally to either of the binary norms. While audience members and fellow participants may have disagreed on her suitability as a contestant, the superaddressee in this situation relates to a presumed authentic subjectivity. A Bakhtinian term, the superaddressee is that authoritative bridge that supports meaning and comprehension for dialogue between people (see Chapter 4). This dialogue always occurs with a temporal and spatial sphere (chronotope – discussed later) with the superaddressee being the imagined shared interlocutor that conveys the signs, signifiers, and, conventions that provide the material for any dialogue and understanding to take place. Without some mutual framework there can be no comprehension. Where the superaddressee is different for different people, misinterpretation, debate, disagreement occur for the agents in dialogue. The increased communicative capacity of technology coupled with mass representation of normative identities and standards renders a requirement for not only something different but something that transgresses those received norms and standards; the technological system of media demands liminal characters. The perceived contradiction of someone winning without the best voice has led to commentators conceiving her win as a highly innovative ‘performance of the authentic self’ (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012: 139), and despite much negative criticism of the show’s ‘unwholesome’ qualities from academics, politicians and media commentators, the show fulfilled an evident latent desire for public consumption of self-expressed identities – as opposed to conforming to social expectations. The show was described as ‘vulgar’ and ‘manipulative’ by state broadcaster CCTV, with some typical comments on the theme quoted here from Madden on the online magazine Ad Age: Regulations announced by [SARFT] this month require . . . contestants to behave conservatively (no more suggestive dancing on stages or vulgar hair, baggy clothes and bare midriffs). . . .

92 Incongruent dreams The authorities are reacting against the sensationalistic, slightly rebellious nature of the contest programs, which promote individualism and personal achievement. (Madden 2006) The superaddressee, the shared and imagined interlocutor that conveys the signs and signifiers of contemporary China, is contested. Super Girl is not an exact replica of Western formats, although superficially the formula is immediately identifiable. Some of the differences include slightly less antagonistic commentary by judges and audiences than viewers of UK or American reality competition shows might be familiar with. Performers are also vetted in terms of what they may or may not do in front of the camera (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012). Yet underlying this reality TV format remain familiar dynamics of free labour, merchandising tie-ins and use of interactive communication technologies outside of the traditional television set. The democratic act of voting in these reality TV shows ties the viewer/consumer into the show via technologies that enable audience participation as well as providing an additional source of revenue for the broadcasters. The advertising fee for 15 seconds of Super Girl airtime was 75,000 RMB (circa €9,500) during the show but reached 112,500 RMB (circa €14,500) during the finale – higher than that of prime-time programmes on CCTV (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012). The show’s annual advertising income for 2005 was estimated at 40 million RMB (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012). The voting exercise comprises a major income stream for the broadcaster, with 40 million RMB (> €5 million) from advertising, 14 million from sponsors and 20 million from text messaging (data from Jian & Liu 2009). The third season of Super Girl in 2006 saw 800 million votes cast by viewers for their favourite contestants. By sending text messages, audience members could vote a maximum of 15 times per show, with a basic vote costing 1 RMB and increasing in cost with more expensive votes carrying more voting weight (Meng 2009). Arguably, Super Girl has provided some of the largest democratic voting exercises to ever have taken place in mainland China, even if the actual voters were only a small percentage of the audience, as claimed by De Kloet and Landsberger (2012). As a democratic voting exercise, it saw the formation of clubs and factions and mud-slinging in the media between support groups, with fan groups arguing which qualities are most desirable in the most suitable candidates (De Kloet & Landsberger 2012: 139). Shows like Super Girl might be seen by some as frivolous teenage entertainment programs, but at the same time they introduce people (conceptually at least) to democratic voting, the submission and expression of their opinions and a format in which their choices and actions can achieve a particular desired victory. In fact, Super Girl became an issue for discussion at the Politburo Standing Committee and was cancelled after the third season due to perceived undesirable effects on the nation’s youth, although it was subsequently placed back on the air the following year (Shirk 2007: 53). We might suggest that a combination of large revenue streams with poor regulative enforcement, coupled with an as yet

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informal governance mechanism, allowed for interested stakeholders to ensure that the show came back on the air. Meng corroborates this thought: As long as institutionalized channels for civic engagement and political participation remain tightly controlled in China, the rather misplaced enthusiasm on the democratic implications of Super Girl is an indication of how far China is from democracy rather than of how close it has come to [it]. (2009: 269) The democratic element in these shows is a commodity for the producers to entice and sell to the audience. Since HSTV introduced the format in 2003, the reality platform increased massively in popularity for audiences and broadcasters alike, with shows such as Dreaming China and Myshow coming to screens in 2004 and five more in the next three years: Super Juvenile, My Hero, Happyboy, Matchlove and Celebrity Coach (Jian & Liu 2009).

Incongruent dreams It appears easy to read the success of shows like Super Girl as facilitated by the reduction in state interference in China’s mediascape and consequently as a sign of greater freedom for broadcasters. Meng (2009) relays how commentators read Super Girl as a democratic act in a country hostile to any such democratic actions, citing authors such as Cui (2005), Lynch (2005), Yardley (2005) and Zhou (2005). These authors suggest, to various degrees, that while the show itself was not political, it was a rare opportunity for the public to express their voice on some public outcome, thus contributed to the show’s popularity. This democratic approach, these authors note, was made possible by new communications technologies. This perspective is, however, questioned by de Kloet and Landsberger, who write, To read the success of Super Girl as being caused by new technological developments runs the danger of retreating to a utopian technological determinism. The increased marketization of the media industry, partly facilitated by technologies such as the satellite and the internet, is part and parcel of the government-initiated polices to reform the media in China. In other words, the opening up of the media does not imply a retreat of the state. (2012: 138) The authors go on to broaden their argument, stating that the same is true of emerging technologies in general: nation-states maintain control over the interactivities a populace can engage with on a popular, everyday basis. Any increase in the potential communicative capacity of technology similarly increases the penetration of the state into everyday life: ‘[C]onsequently, the potential for change that [media technologies] hold is closely monitored by the state’ (de Kloet & Landsberger 2012: 138). Meng agrees, stating, ‘This kind of celebratory reading

94 Incongruent dreams of reality TV . . . tends to gloss over the unequal access to means of production in the media sector, and moreover the unbalanced power relationship embedded in mediated communication environments in general’ (2009: 258f). Production in all of these audience-participation shows is customised in part by the audience for the audience – based on audience preference as expressed by voting during different stages of the season, which in turn shapes the media content for viewing. In light of this, the democratic element of these shows is understood by Jian and Liu (2009) as simply a feature of this type of show and not a suggestion of any greater desire, motivation or stimulus for political processes to change. Jian and Liu call this an ‘underlying operation’ of the show, arguing, In our opinion, Supergirl simply includes the basic elements of democracy: namely, voting and a vague feeling of becoming the masters of their own destiny. But, in fact, in order to vote one must pay money. Also, in order to be your own master, you must perform unpaid labor. Democracy here is only an articulated feeling and desire to act on one’s emotional involvement in the program while having some control on its course. Democracy becomes a commodity consumed and produced by the audiences themselves. At the same time, it creates the pleasure of entertainment. (2009: 530) The use and synergy of different communication technologies for audience and contestant participation in Super Girl enable what Jian and Liu refer to as a democratisation of opportunities. In such a large country, where competition for national or even local success is extremely high, the problems of unattainability and inequality of opportunity are repackaged by reality television shows like Super Girl, which represent and sell the perceived possibility of achievement to a wide audience. This democratising potential of technology can be misread as technology holding some inherent liberating quality. However, as these authors suggest, while technology certainly facilitates greater access, this particular kind of democracy is only an illusion created by the participants themselves through the process of consumption. The success of the contestants is a carefully crafted product reliant entirely on the success of selling the dream or illusion that such success can actually be attained. By engaging in this consumption process, the consumers self-create an entertainment spectacle of democratic acts. It is only after stages of communication and evaluation that contestants can be deemed to be successful, and then not necessarily for the ‘right’ reasons, as the next case study will show. The audience’s ‘democratic’ consumption of the show produces a commodity that is sold back to them. Reading the show in this manner makes it appear like an Orwellian device for satiating a populace with a façade of free choice within a system totality. Is this really the case? Frazier and Zhang write, The Internet is an important site for such discussions and cultural sharing. However the participatory culture enabled by the Internet must simultaneously

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be seriously engaged. Critical reflection over how individuals and groups perform their national, racial, gender and class identities online can produce more meaningful opportunities to unpack how nationalism, racism, and hegemony are articulated and legitimized through specific discourses about difference. (2014: 13) Possible contestants are presented as possible outcomes in the competition, and by engaging in the contest, the audience themselves become part of the show. The act of voting for a desired contestant is an act of consumption of a preferred outcome. The text vote in the instance of reality TV can be understood as a kind of alchemical act. It is not an action for a particular outcome but rather an act of consuming an outcome by appropriation and mis-association. The voter sets up a false association with the contestant, and the casting of the vote appropriates the characteristics of the contestant as those the voter associates with themselves. Through such consumption they are constructing their own identity around a host of values and symbols embodied in the contestant, the show, the TV station and society at large within the given chronotope. Chronotope refers to the set of temporal and social coordinates of any event; it infers time-space as an identifiable and intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relations. Within any given chronotope, the mores and norms of society gain crystallisation through representation, offering a mirror with which to critique or police those same mores and values. In relation to Super Girl, Meng comments on the use of different ethnic groups and social classes, which illustrates the desire for liminal characters designed to create division, distinction and a further driving apart of what was stable: Casting people from different backgrounds has more to do with the need to create tensions for the show and is less about promoting representational diversity. More often than not, reality TV participants are expected to be tokens of their respective social groups, so that clashes of values are played out on screen. They are like categorized commodities that end up reinforcing rather than challenging stereotypes. (2009: 259) Meng approaches Super Girl from a Debordian perspective, which has the potential to present a very bleak reading of popular culture as reinforcing hegemonic myths that ‘reinforce and naturalize the existing power structure’ (2009: 268). However, wary of such pessimism and working from Meng and Bakhtin, let us take a different, non-Debordian reading of Super Girl; Such a media event can indeed potentially upset hegemonic power, not via its carnivalesque façade but by peeling open a transitory space within the social manifold where representations of the incongruences between experience and identity are opened up for reflection and reappraisal. Reality TV contests of this type fail to become true carnival celebrations in the Bakhtinian sense. The potential for disturbing dictatorial power, from a Bakhtinian perspective, lies in the potential for the ‘newly authentic’ or

96 Incongruent dreams careful representations that might be presented. ‘Newly authentic’ is intentionally placed within quotation marks, as anything authentic needs to be contextual, and any authentic representation is participative in a changing context; it is the element of transgredience whereby participation in the event fulfils the meaning of the same event (there is no objective transcendent out-there event). The TV show is as much a part of cultural co-creation and representation as any other representation, and any representation that reflects social incongruencies brings those aspects for social change into dialogue with participants, all boundaries at threshold moments are permeable and allow identities to be reformed and remade. This is not an overextension of the simple text-vote reality TV format but an explicitly Bakhtinian understanding of the instant ramifications of an action at a given time and place, and its relation to all previous and subsequent actions. Each utterance is one amongst many, with each vying for meaningful appropriation by society at large. The format of reality TV opens up possibilities for new and multiple representations (Meng 2009), and amongst these representations an audience member may find one particularly meaningful as something they relate to rather than buy into or consume. The new possibility for representation is a result not just of the format nor solely due to technological empowerment but due to the discrepancy between one’s experience of society and their existence as synonymous with their society. The TV format further requires political capital to be allowed to be broadcast in the first place, and as such the political environment plays as much of a role as the technological capacity to produce such a show. While Super Girl cannot be deemed part of any democratic transformation of political China, it can be seen as occurring within an interpretative space which allows people to reflect on the values and mores of their society and intriguingly take part in a public celebration/ denouncement of it at its boundaries. This manifold inculcates a social dynamism that fosters a rebalancing of one’s incongruent experiences.

Let’s Go! Oriental Angel In 2009, Shanghai’s Dragon TV station produced Let’s Go! Oriental Angel, a standard replica of the HSTV Super Girl following the ‘talent search’ configuration: contestants appearing and singing live on TV in order to compete for the viewers’ votes, which could be phoned or texted into the program. In light of the previous discussion regarding ‘democratic’ consumption of identity, Let’s Go! Oriental Angel is particularly interesting for the appearance of another liminal character, a contestant called Lou Jing. Lou Jing reached the top five contestants in the Shanghai regional competition before being eliminated in the top 30 at the national level; however, the maelstrom of activity and attention given to Lou Jing began on the internet long before reaching national TV and national media. Lou Jing caused shock, outrage and intrigue for many Chinese due to her appearance as simultaneously Chinese and not Chinese. She was born in Shanghai, speaks Chinese (natively) and au fait with Chinese culture from birth. However, she does not look like a ‘typical’ Chinese, as she is of mixed racial origin and thus is considered hùnxuèér (混血儿), meaning ‘mixed-blood’, as opposed to ‘pure’ (i.e.,

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of pure Chinese ancestry). Her mother is Shanghaiese and her absent father an African American whom she had never met. Online debates centred on identity politics and racial prejudice but also questioning issues of social conservatism and exploitation. Lou Jing was, in effect, a spectacle, not by choice but accorded to her by the prevailing socio-cultural conditions of the time. The reaction to her appearance on Let’s Go! Oriental Angel was immediate and sparked numerous debates in online chat rooms and forums, both in Shanghai and across the nation, about what it means to be Chinese. Her ‘reveal’ on TV included her wearing a different outfit from other contestants and a mask to hide her eyes before the introduction. She was referred to as our ‘black pearl’ and ‘chocolate girl’ (Shang 2018). Online debate forums such as KDS Life and Sina Blog saw numerous hypercritical comments regarding all aspects of Lou Jing, from her physical characteristics to her family, her mother, her upbringing and so on. While most topics bore little scholarly thought, they did all derive from immediate questions of contemporary morality, Chinese identity, Chinese nationality, ethnicity, racism, globalisation and modernity. The public attention that the event garnered saw Lou Jing’s mother invited onto the show to describe what it was like raising a child as a single parent. For conservative Chinese values, the public display on TV of a single parent and mixed-race child was an affront, with deeply incompatible characteristics for what one might think it is to be Chinese. Leung Wing-Fai writes: The notion of Hanzu (Han ethnicity) as a cohesive body of the nation is a modern phenomenon that is now deeply inscribed in the Chinese collective imagination. The term Zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation), mostly [refers] to the Han ethnic group. . . . Ethnicity as a term only appeared in English dictionaries in the early 1970s and Rong Ma argues that it has ‘culturalized’ race. If it is supposed that the difference between race (the biological make-up) and ethnicity is chiefly about culture, then Lou Jing’s mixed race identity destabilizes the concept of the Han ethnicity. (2015: 297) Her existence and her appearance forced a reaction from individuals regarding their core beliefs – beliefs that can remain unquestioned for the average Chinese citizen. Whether this reaction was a conscious one or simply a kneejerk reaction to perceived attack, it nevertheless brought about a questioning – and therefore a certain devaluing – of prevailing normative ideas regarding what it is to be Chinese. An additional aspect to take into consideration is the fact that this show was a competition driven by audience choice and participation. That is to say, the contestants advanced due to popularity in public vote rather than ‘talent’ or any other marker. Lou Jing’s singing voice may not be exemplary, but nevertheless, and in spite or because of incredible polemical debate surrounding her, Lou Jing ultimately did very well in the competition, ranking in the top 30 before elimination. The media success of Lou Jing, while perhaps not down to her talent for singing, can like Li Yuchun (mentioned earlier) be attributed to her authenticity. In such talent shows, the element or quality that appears sought in contestants is

98 Incongruent dreams often being true-to-one’s-self (真我 zhēnwǒ). This is a contentious point, as what is deemed real by reality TV is problematic to say the very least, yet the visual and discursive trappings of entertainment shows that present a ‘real’ image do not necessarily convince the audience. Rather, these trappings can be understood as the frame within which authenticity is sought out. We can ‘read’ Lou Jing as a physical manifestation of the economic reforms brought in by Deng, which facilitated a steady increase in the numbers of foreigners living in and travelling to China, especially Shanghai. Jing is symbolic of a rapidly changing city and country that craves new fashions, new experiences and new identities but which is still worried about traditional values, how they fit in with current social attitudes and whether everything is moving in the ‘right’ direction. Within this chronotope, the key aspect is the difference or gap between how people experience the society they live in and how they imagine that society to be, coupled with how they believe it should be. For the chronotope, we focus on the social and cognitive aspect that gives form to it. In China, Lou Jing arose from and drew attention to a widening incongruence between experiences of China and what it is to be Chinese and the perceptions of China and what it is to be Chinese. This fluid imaginative space within the chronotope is a liminal, a space where mental and social constructions of one’s society takes place against the incongruence of experience (or vice versa) and can be reimagined. Not only can one’s sense of place be reimagined or reconstrued, but so too is one’s conception of self: this is a function of liminal characters within the social manifold, whereby people come to interpret not just something more of their experience but an integral re-evaluation of their experiences and imagined way of being. In the example of Lou Jing, normative judgements of what it means to be Chinese were called into question, not just for Lou Jing but collectively for the entire audience that the show began to command both directly and indirectly via online chatrooms and traditional media. There occurs a shared reflection on the values and mores to which the appearance of Lou Jing, as herself yet with others, draws attention. Exploration and investigation of her life, experiences, thoughts and feelings by media interlocutors drew out more information to feed wider debate and reflections expanding the field of incongruency and fostering a wider social questioning about the incongruence between experience and understanding. A central area of concern for the CCP is the inability to hold control over the fecundity of social life; regulation and social control can only cover structure and form in the chronotope, but attempts to be actively responsible for imagining the self are destined to formulate incongruences such as the one relayed in Lou Jing. Placing agency in the hands of the consumer rather than those of the state the use of tele-voting and other communicative technologies such as online chatrooms opened up the congruency manifold to pursue questions of the imagined self, society and state. This issue became more fraught when Lou Jing began to make her way through the competition of Let’s Go! Oriental Angel, drawing more and more media coverage and enflaming contentious debates that spread far beyond the remit of the TV show – questioning the essentials of what it is to be Chinese, a questioning for which Lou Jing was the instigator in her role as a liminal figure.

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Her existence and prominence gave increased voice and impetus to individualism, expression and autonomy, but only in response to the increased acts of individual expression and autonomy that were taking place in Chinese society. Lou Jing acted as a focal point for her interlocutors engaged in trying to orientate their own expectations and values against wider social coordinates due to the incongruences of experience.

Conclusion Living in a world of such manifest social complexity requires us to make use of media to try to decipher the type of society we live in and to distinguish our place within it. The interpretation of media seems increasingly difficult to navigate by interpretation of signs and symbols that appear artificial and designed (manipulated) for particular purposes. Those purposes do not have the care of the end user in mind but rather market-share, profit, sales etc. Furthermore, the processes involved in highly developed media systems are beyond full comprehension; contrary to conventional ideas of technology as a tool, technology is a driver of social change as well as a consequence. As society is synonymous with its own process of creation, the task of comprehending society in its totality is beyond the scope and power of any individual, but the corollary of such efforts is the provision of a sense of place and identity for the individual. As Winner writes, Members of the technological society actually know less and less about the fundamental structures and processes sustaining them. The gap between the realities of the world and the pictures individuals have of that world grows ever greater. For this reason, the possibility of directing technological systems toward clearly perceived, consciously chosen, widely shared aims become an increasingly dubious matter. (1992: 295f) Technology is closely intertwined with communication in everyday life. Our mobile phones are no more than a foot from our bodies, providing a standing reserve of communicative possibilities. The point is clear: the study of technosocial forces requires bringing the politics of technology to the fore rather than allowing it to remain uncritically embedded in the practices of everyday life, unexamined and thus potentially unaccountable to responsibility and justice. Responsibility and justice require making agency and intent obvious and clear, and the character of contemporary technology obfuscates and conceals exactly agency and intent. As Crowley and Heyer note ‘the medium is never neutral’ (2011: xiv). Information is not simply knowledge; the latter is constructed from the former, and this process is influenced by a myriad of factors; apart from the information provider, knowledge receiver and context of the information flow, the material effect of transmission further influences the quality and tone of the knowledge construed, or as McLuhan wrote, the medium is the message (1964). If the material transmission of information itself affects communication, then how might we

100 Incongruent dreams understand the effects of the progressive complexity of technology which tends towards reducing or concealing political economies at work in both the production of the technological object and the information it presides over within society. It is worth quoting Winner here at length who manages to convey with great clarity the impact and quandary facing the citizen of a technological society: The development of advanced electronics has made it possible to conceal the complexity of important functions. [284f]. . . . Manifest social complexity is replaced by concealed electronic complexity. . . . In encounters with both manifest and concealed complexity, the plight of members of the technological society can be compared to that of a newborn child. . . . Much of the data that enters its sense does not form coherent wholes. . . . But with time children begin to make sense of the world. . . . Citizens of the modern age in this respect are less fortunate than children. They never escape the fundamental bewilderment in the face of the complex world that their senses report. (1992: 284f, 286) Winner’s pessimism is directed at the inability of the individual to understand the whole, but arguably this was never possible; this may not be solely a feature of life in the contemporary world but possibly of earlier times, too, impossible as it is to know directly. What is necessary – but not always attainable – is for humans to come to understand their position within their world of experience as it relates to their wider community. In contemporary technological societies this experience increasingly begins with technological processes or devices. Borgmann pinpoints devices as the preeminent example of our current technological paradigm, ‘devices’ meaning the thing that is used as a means to an end; the device is ‘the compound of commodity and machinery’ (2003: 18) which conceals those matters which we care about in everyday cultural life – in Borgmann’s terms focal things and focal practices (1984). The distinguishing features of devices today are, firstly, the variability of means, in contrast with the relative stability of ends; and secondly, the increasing unfamiliarity of means through their concealment and complexity, despite the continued usability of the goods or services offered (1984: 43). Borgmann uses the phrase social disburdenment to describe the impact of these features, and this can be read in two different ways: actions becoming increasingly carefree or increasingly free of care (1984). The concealment of the wider social and physical requirements of devices via processes of machination and automation conceals the social relations that give rise to such requirements and presents them packaged as commodities and consumed as such, thereby concealing the background political economy. The consumption of the end products of technological processes, whether through media or the commodification of things and even identities, inculcates an acceptance of these concealed underlying processes. Li Yuchun and Lou Jing were both perceived as an affront to the value system of the day, but that they were able to participate, that they exist in their very facticity, suggests that the reality of the society is out of step with (conservative) images of

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that society. By taking part and representing their authentic subjectivity, or what Bakhtin would refer to as their answerability, they moved in on the fluctuating coordinates of Chinese society’s time and place and set about permanently readjusting them by the facticity of their co-being (answerability). We can understand a mode of cultural transmission taking place here whereby identities transform yet remain recognisable under the same identity – an ontogenetic development. Wark (1994) has argued for a new understanding of such events in the media age; they speculate for a need of a new understanding of human culture in the information age. They relay that due to new and improving communications technologies the distant is now near, the remote now familiar; events that are not necessarily personal events and for the most part are outside of our own lived experience are still presented to us through the media and form part of our intimate experience. The mediated event and the personally experienced event are now intertwined in the human condition in a mode that can facilitate cultural transmission and social development via the social manifold, so much so that it can seem the media projection of an event dominates over its factual historicity. From this perspective, there is a privileging of an ‘authentic’ event over an ‘inauthentic’ media event, but the human condition needs to be founded in experience, and whether the experience is of a mediated event or non-mediated event should be secondary. The argument here is not – as with Wark – for a new understanding of events in the media age but for a framework that can credibly account for the experience of certain kinds of communication incorporating one’s personal experience with a wider societal relevance. Li Yuchun’s or Lou Jing’s experiences are presented and re-presented so that others can come to understand the meaning and value of their own position in society in relation to others’ positions in society. In this way, audiences can come to understand the positions which they themselves occupy in the narrative of China as a living, changing, developing social space. This mediation of signs and symbols across the social plane occurs within the congruency manifold. Even if someone disagrees for whatever reason with the facticity of Lou Jing, they nevertheless can recognise the evident changes taking place in a society of which she is part – as presented via her experiences – and they can in turn reflect upon the meaning of this for their own lives in their personal and social development. The development of new mediative technologies in China has obfuscated agency and responsibility, so that state power can locate the individual but the individual cannot locate the state; the line between the two is concealed and even arbitrary. The process of individuation that was initiated, in part, as consequences of Deng’s economic reforms is in full effect. Through the further consequences of globalisation, culminating with Xi’s new political slogan The Chinese Dream, the entire historical richness of China is embedded within the communicability of experience but is itself transformed through the increased communicative capacity of technology. Information is repackaged and consumed as commodified artefacts (superficially) satiating desires for self-expression. Technology manipulates the historical processes that beget it so that its effects are initially unclear and then become unknown entirely, culminating in wide ideological acceptance and

102 Incongruent dreams normalisation of the everyday via consumption of information and even identity, both transmogrified into commodities. We can identify China as a society in permanent liminality, but with a promising caveat: there appear interpretative spaces, congruency manifolds that allow for reflection and genuine cognition of one’s place within society against the backdrop of myth, culture and ideology. We can identify the actuality of permanent liminality and these congruency manifolds for social dynamism through the existence of liminal characters such as the trickster (see Chapter 5) and other liminal characters such as Li Yuchun and Lou Jing. Contemporary China remains on the threshold, and we cannot predict or prophecy the signs that will see an emergence from these liminal characteristics, but as long as the possibility for a space in which identity can be expressed in a kind of free play, there must be openings to recover our lost answerability.

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M., 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin: Texas University Press. Borgmann, A., 1984. Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Borgmann, A., 2003. Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. Crowley, D. J., & Heyer, P., 2011. Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon/Pearson. Cui, L., & Lee, F. L. F., 2010. Becoming Extra-Ordinary: Negotiation of Media Power in the Case of Super Girl’ Voice in China. Popular Communication, 8(4), 256–272. Cui, W., 2005. The Democratic Gesture of Super Girl. Beijing News. Available from: www. tecn.cn/data/detail.php?id = 8524 [Accessed 4th July 2019]. De Kloet, J., & Landsberger, S., 2012. Fandom, Politics and the Super Girl Contest in a Globalized China. In: Zwaan, K. & de Bruin, J., eds. Adapting Idols: Authenticity, Identity and Performance in a Global Television Format. Farnham: Ashgate, 135–147. Frazier, R. T., & Zhang, L., 2014. Ethnic Identity and Racial Contestation in Cyberspace: Deconstructing the Chineseness of Lou Jing. China Information, 28(2), 237–258. Jian, M., & Liu, C., 2009. “Democratic Entertainment”: Commodity and Unpaid Labor of Reality TV: A Preliminary Analysis of China’s Supergirl. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10(4), 524–543. Lull, J., 2013. China Turned On: Television, Reform and Resistance. London: Routledge. Lynch, D. J., 2005. China under Spell of Mighty “Super Girl”. U.S.A. Today, May 27th, 15a. Madden, N., 2006. China Cracks Down on TV Talent Competitions: Success of “Supergirl” Prompts Government to Issue New Regulations [online]. Ad Age. Available from: https://adage.com/article/news/china-cracks-tv-talent-competitions/108174 [Accessed 11th January 2018]. McLuhan, M., 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Signet. Meng, B., 2009. Who Needs Democracy If We Can Pick Our Favorite Girl? Super Girl as Media Spectacle. Chinese Journal of Communication, 2(3), 257–272. Shang, D., 2018. “Chocolate Girl” Lou Jing on Oriental Angel [online]. Shanghaiist. Available from: http://shanghaiist.com/2009/09/03/videos_chocolate_girl_lou_jing_on_o_1/ [Accessed 5th October 2009]. Shirk, S. L., 2007. China: Fragile Superpower. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Shirk, S. L., 2011. Changing Media, Changing China. New York: Oxford University Press. Wark, M., 1994. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wing-Fai, L., 2015. Who Could Be an Oriental Angel? Lou Jing, Mixed Heritage and the Discourses of Chinese Ethnicity. Asian Ethnicity, 16(3), 294–313. Winner, L., 1992. Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. 8th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wu, J., 2011. Enlightenment or Entertainment: The Nurturance of an Aesthetic Public Sphere through a Popular Talent Show in China. The Communication Review, 14(1), 46–67. Yardley, J., 2005. The Chinese Get the Vote, If Only for “Super Girl”. New York Times, [online]. Available from: www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/weekinreview/the-chinese-getthe-vote-if-only-for-super-girl.html?searchResultPosition=1 [Accessed 30th October 2005]. Zhang, X., 2009. From “Foreign Propaganda” to “International Communication”: China’s Promotion of Soft Power in the Age of Information and Communication Technologies. In: Zhang, X. and Zheng, Y., eds. China’s Information and Communications Technology Revolution: Social Changes and State Responses. New York: Routledge, 103–120. Zhou, R., 2005. Secret Behind Idol-Making Super Girl Contest [online]. China Daily. Available from: www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-08/27/content_472681.htm [Accessed 30th October 2005].

Conclusion

In spite of much literature affording attention to the benefits of communications technology on social change in a progressive sense, the impact of communications technology is at best a double-edged sword that can swamp academic debate, transforming intelligent discussion into discursive practices only articulating alternating positions. Social science scholars writing on contemporary China have toiled over implications of mobile and internet technology on governance, social stability and freedom of speech. These studies are important and worthwhile, but overriding teleological concerns can impede proper understanding of communications technology in its fuller sense. In pursing studies of communications technology in China, scholars can be immediately concerned and enthralled by the impact of censorship and the potential from mediative technologies as liberative or as a force for increasing social control. However, it is not so much the potential from mediative technologies that will be of greatest concern to the Communist Party of China (CCP) in their quest for maintaining social harmony and political legitimacy; rather, it is the very fecundity of social life itself that is of greatest political threat to the CCP, on the cusp of rapid socio-cultural change coupled with two decades of rapid economic change. The kind of economic development that China is pursuing is not radically different to that of the West. Developed, globalised societies, against the backdrop of a secular humanist project with teleological ends, lifted the limits for human activity and practice (Szakolczai 2014); this set forth the pursuit of technological practice as a universalising progressive aesthetic (see Chapter 3). We experience our situation as one of constant progress, growth and development, constantly pushing back the threshold for knowledge with ever increasing quantities and exactitudes of information. As Bateson tells us, even the popular idea of science which holds that some extra knowledge will always enable us to predict and explain phenomena ‘is wrong, not merely in detail, but in principle’ (1979: 40f) and uses glass breaking as a common basic example: while we can predict that glass will break upon some traumatic force, we are unable to exactly predict the break pattern despite ever-increasing nuance in our ability for measurement and observation. Questioning how to approach technology and how it might impact society led to further questioning of the teleological assumptions about development in

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general, normative ideas about social change, and querying whether perspectives (assumptions) on technology lead to repeated mischaracterisations of human experience and existence – e.g. China in Transition, inevitability of democracy, technological utopia, social harmony and freedom (towards and/or from). These assumptions, widespread in mainstream academia and popular society, do untold conceptual damage to understanding the human experience and social flourishing (Szakolczai 2016), with technology (media) appearing as a crucial pivot. The base finding is that the combination of communication with technology and the development of this techno-social force has radically altered the ability for interhuman engagement – so much so that there is an irredeemable gap between the individual’s ability to cognitively understand manifest social complexity (Winner 1992). This implicitly means humanity is within a predicament. Our predicament, and one not just relating to China but to contemporary human societies in general, is the suspension of limits and boundaries altogether. Therefore, we had need to utilise an alternate view with which to speak; the concept of permanent liminality was introduced as this alternative and traced through the historical origins of modern China. The development of new mediative technologies in China has obfuscated agency and responsibility so that state power can locate the individual but the individual cannot locate the state; the line between the two is concealed and even arbitrary. The process of individuation that was initiated, in part as consequences of Deng’s economic reforms, is in full effect and with this individualisation a parallel loss of sense and identity. Through the further consequences of globalisation, the historical richness of China is itself transformed, through the increased communicative capacity of technology. Information is repackaged and consumed as commodified artefacts (superficially) satiating desires for self-expression. Technology manipulates the historical processes that beget it so that its effects are initially unclear and then become unknown entirely, culminating in wide ideological acceptance and normalisation of the everyday via consumption of information and even identity, both transmogrified into commodities without substance or real form. Limits are formative in that they give instructional stability to content and are necessary for any concept of stability. The suspension of limits is the very thing that allows for the new ordering of experience, but limits are to be reset once the crossing of the threshold is complete and the step forward taken from former frames. This lack of limits then refers to a failure in fulfilling transition and results in permanent liminality, stuck at a threshold in a permanent suspension of limits. Global societies are frenetically circulating a cacophony of ideas and images that flood our cognitive functions with an array of worldviews but generally fail to allow of proper comprehension of the manifest social complexity of contemporary times. This brings us to question whether existing frameworks can properly account for the nature of our rapidly changing society under the influence of increasingly complex and pervasive technologies. This title has not sought to quantify the effects of technology on social change but to explore our understanding of technology as a techno-social force, something that is intimately bound up with human communication and culture.

106 Conclusion What has been presented here is a framework for understanding how meaningful answerability might occur against such a backdrop with particular reference to China. Using Bakhtin’s dialogical philosophy (with input from Benjamin) we illustrated with examples from Chinese society the possibility of incongruency within the social manifold. These examples hold a number of important points, illustrating as they do a technologically advanced society, one that is ideologically bound, experiencing rapid social change, and evidence of permanent liminality via manifest liminal characters in the world of media. Censorship, when thought of in relation to allowing or disallowing such and such a phrase or topic, is not an effective means of curtailing the potential for interpretation of meaning via communication (fecundity of language). Our participation in mass media societies gives rise to liminal characters, as exampled by the three studies on the Grass-Mud Horse, Li Yuchun and Lou Jing respectively. These liminal characters, the former a trickster and the two latter peripheral, permeate and represent formerly stable limits; they are on the threshold and paradigmatic of living through liminal times. In no way is this to suggest the characters as falsehoods, nor to make normative judgments; normative claims must be transposed onto a different level when boundaries are malleable and possibly, even presumably, realigning. What the case studies have attempted to show is that regardless of the prevailing type of communications technology available, what is fundamental for social change and for social development is the existence of certain planes of communication, certain modes of communication that are more than simply imitative. They must be more than literal, more than explanatory; they must be allegorical, they must be polyphonic. Communication must be interpretative in order to relay experiences from one generation to the next, from one particular cohort to another; cultural transmission transverses via incongruencies within the social manifold. The manifold is the field within which the dialogical relation between individuals and societies takes places and as such is the field through which we can conceptualise social development via disparities between social context and social change. Communications technology per se neither causes nor implies one normative type of social change over another, but, using the manifold model, social development is understood to result from the uneasy tension between social context and social change. The greater the incongruencies between an individual’s experience and the expectations of society, the greater the pull for such experiential incongruencies to be resolved. This self-growth can occur (is not restricted to) incongruent spaces the permeate the social manifold, arenas that foster a resonance between one’s experiences and the wider societal norms and expectations. These incongruent spaces are interpretative spaces formed by the presence of liminal figures that foster interpretative reflection on the disparity between one’s own cognition of social experience and the extra-subjective narrative of that experience within society. This can be phrased as an overcoming of cognitive dissonance or an accommodation of experiential incongruence within the social coordinates of one’s society. The important feature of such arenas is the apparent newness of the technological

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aspect. Communications technology mediates multi-modal experiences in a way that by quantity and quality far exceed the cognitive abilities of one individual to wholly understand. Our participation in the mass media of contemporary society has the potential for transgredient effects; it fosters a reinterpretation of our position and identity within society that overcomes, or provides anew, an awareness of our experiences against fluxing social coordinates; particularly in mind here is experience within permanent liminality. The proposal for interpretative arenas whereby experience is communicated and reflected upon under different social forces such as state censorship, mass media, public forums and so on is a result of trying to understand how cultural transmission might occur when so much of culture is now mediated by technology. This is not to say that such zones are dependent on technology, but it would seem that communications technology facilitates the immersion of the individual with the experiences of the many, thereby creating a scaffolding or network of coordinates so that the individual can gain an understanding of the changing cultural and social norms via techno-social change. Such a zone needs to be interpretative rather than a means of direct explanation or understanding. Fidelity in cultural transmission is not only impossible but undesirable: In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents; but the attempt always and inevitably fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not to DNA. The process of transmission of culture is a sort of hybrid or mix-up of the two realms. It must attempt to use the phenomena of learning for the purpose of replication because what the parents have was learned by them. If the offspring miraculously had the DNA that would give them the parental skills, those skills would be different and perhaps nonviable. (Bateson 1979: 48) In the example of the Grass-Mud Horse, we can see how the narrative presents a picture or understanding of netizens’ experiences of officials’ interference with the online community. This most important aspect in the reading of the Grass-Mud Horse phenomenon was that the story delivers an understanding of an experience allegorically that many netizens may not have directly experienced themselves. The experiences of those on the negative end of the communication system (censorship and surveillance) are represented in a format, so that more people who may or may not share the experiences can come to understand the meaning and values in relation to their own position and they can come to understand their position which they occupy in the narrative (of life, the universe and everything). And this story must be told in a manner that at once escapes the alternative absolutist narrative of the totalitarian monologue yet demonstrates the pathology of that same dominant and unforgiving meta-narrative. While the propagation of the narrative was certainly facilitated by technology, it could not be said to be derived from technology but only from the story itself. It appeared that the recognition of an experience within the story led to the story’s pre-imagined community

108 Conclusion contributing to its popularity. This reading moves the understanding of the GrassMud Horse as a media phenomenon away from the debate of whether technology is liberative or controlling but to a more nuanced understanding of the importance of social experience and the inability to wholly censor language or experiential understanding. While the Grass-Mud Horse example is a more overtly political example, we also looked at two talent shows in China and were again able to discern the importance of shared social experiences, the investment in shared symbols of a community’s self-image. This interaction between an individual and their society is not one of direct relay with the signs and symbols of their contemporary society. To look at the role of communications technology in social change is to look at the lattice structure it maintains between social context (experiences of everyday life) and social action, between the community represented by the shared experiences of everyday life and the actions that bring this same experience about. The transmission or communication of a society’s values takes place across an unequal plane, from the vast complexity of an entire social system to the comparatively ill-equipped faculties of its individual members. Even if someone disagrees or cannot accept the representation of a peripheral-cum-liminal character, such as with Lou Jing, they nevertheless can recognise the evident changes taking place in society, as presented via the representation of alternate experiences of being reflecting upon the meaning of this to their own lives. This manner of mediation of the signs and symbols across the social plane occurs due to the incongruity of experience within the social manifold. This field of incongruency can be conceived of as the distance between the actual contextualisation of societal meaning-formation and the perceived or imagined social context for societal meaning-formation. Meaning formation here refers to the understanding of oneself as a social being. As social beings, the distance between intergenerational knowledge and self-knowledge must be maintained and transversed through the pedagogical activity of relating to one another in time. This pedagogical activity is not goal-orientated beyond its own self-activity of mutual engagement in difference and simultaneity. This enables the future of a culture to be opened up rather than submitting to extremes of meaning formation: the radicalism of totalitarianism (tradition) or neoliberalism (nihilism). The democratic capacity for reproduction within technology allows for the simulation of content ad infinitum from any context – within which content reappears, context-bound and tied to a specific socio-historical circumstance. It is this dynamic relation between context and change that communications technology pervades and from which a tension emanates. The space of this tension is a potential arena for interpretative development. This ‘development’ is not of the same kind as the modernist linear conception of progress but of the kind that a society or civilisation may be said to be flourishing or decaying as alterations in an oscillating historical present. The interpretative framework we have worked through in this book is not designed as hypothesis for falsification or verification – instead it is hoped that my interpretation of events lends some explanatory power to identifiable social processes, particularly in identifying the continued biases at work

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in relation to understanding the impact of technology in social life or, indeed, in trying to speak about a China or Chinese society. While I have committed my own fallacy and spoken about China through proposing it as a permanent liminal society, I have done so with a promising caveat: there appear to be imaginative spaces that aid the communicability of experience, interpretative arenas that allow for reflection and genuine cognition of one’s place within society against the backdrop of myth, culture and ideology. Contemporary China and much of globalised societies remain on a threshold, and we cannot predict or prophecy the signs that will see an emergence from our permanently liminal characteristics; but as long as the possibility for a space in which identity can be expressed in a kind of free play, there must be openings. My offering has been interested in the mutation of identities and cultural transmission, but much more ethnographic work is needed to give a proper account of the philosophical references used throughout, and this work is yet to come, with the hope that others will join. This work is already being undertaken through International Political Anthropology and elsewhere. Future work will broaden and deepen the current avenues, which have aimed solely at establishing some preliminary methods, ideas and questions.

Bibliography Bateson, G., 1979. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Dutton. Szakolczai, A., 2016. Processes of Social Flourishing and Their Liminal Collapse: Elements to a Genealogy of Globalization. British Journal of Sociology, 67(3), 435–455. Szakolczai, A., 2017. Permanent Liminality and Modernity: Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival through Novels. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Winner, L., 1992. Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. 8th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Index

50 Cent Army 66 authoritarian 64 Bakhtin, M. M. 44, 46, 67, 80, 101 Bateson, G. 104 Benjamin, W. 47, 48, 75, 78 Borgmann, A. 39, 40–41, 42, 100 Burke, K. 44, 45 capitalism 15 categorical imperative 68 China studies 10 chronocentricity 63 chronotope 91, 95, 98 content experience 12; sense 18 Cultural Revolution 3, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 cultural transmission 4, 8, 55, 81, 82, 83, 101, 106, 109; liminality 4, 20, 23, 107 Democracy Wall 26–32 democratisation framework 3, 62, 76 Deng, X. 3, 25, 27, 65, 87 Descartes, R. 53 dialogical 8, 44, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 91, 106 Enlightenment 12, 13, 14, 32, 53; freedom 17; reason 17 experiential 12, 34, 51, 53, 68; congruence 79, 82, 106; understanding 19, 71, 78, 80, 83, 108 Falun Gong 65 Foucault, M. 52 Four Modernisations 29; Fifth 31

Gang of Four 27 Graeber, D. 16 Grass-Mud Horse 72–75, 106, 107, 108 Harding, S. 49 Heidegger, M. 40, 42, 43, 44 Horvath, A. 18, 40 identity-formation 14 ideology 35, 55, 75, 102 instrumentalism 40, 41 intertextuality 80, 83 Jonas, H. 54 Kant, I. 12–13, 51, 68 Koselleck, R. 52, 53, 55 Latour, B. 50 liminal character 71, 80, 81, 82, 106, 108 liminality 23, 31, 32, 98, 106 Li, Yuchun 91, 97, 100, 106 Lou, Jing 96, 100, 106 manifest social complexity 105 Mao, Z. 27 mass media 64, 89 meaning-formation 79, 108 megamachine 38, 42 Meng, B. 3, 20, 71, 95 mimesis 47 modal understanding 51, 54, 60, 67; progress 54 modernity 17–20; multiple 10, 17 Mumford, L. 42 Needham, J. 11 Needham Question 11–14

Index Occident 14 Orientalism (Said) 13 permanent liminality 23, 25, 32, 84, 102, 105, 106, 107, 109 poiēsis 47 post-authoritarianism 16 post-totalitarianism 16 problématiques 18, 19 progress 36, 50, 55; complexity 75; history 16, 52; ideology 55; liberative technology 62; modal understanding 54; normativity 12; social 14; technology 33, 34 rational-choice 17 recognition 45, 46 Red Guards 28 representation 45, 46, 47 reproduction 48 Shirk, S. 64 social disburdenment 100 social flourishing 105 social manifold 71, 79–83, 98, 101, 106 storytelling 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 107 substantivism 40 superaddressee 67, 68, 69, 91 surveillance 63, 75, 107 Szakolczai, A. 24, 25, 36, 51, 104, 105 technological: complexity 75; developments 58; human tools 49, 50; knowledge 49

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technology: communication 58, 67, 99, 106; democratisation 33, 94; democratising potential 94; developments 58; digital 59; fragmentation 34; liberative 62; modern 54; philosophical approach 40–44; reproduction 108; social change 33; social progress 34; surveillance 63, 75 techno-social 38, 39, 43, 50, 81, 83, 105 teleology 15–16, 25, 34, 35, 104 Thomassen, B. 17, 23–24 threshold points 40 tradition 48, 58 transitoriness 40 trickster 71, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 106 Turner, V. 24 universalising 12, 14, 49–55, 58, 104 van Dijk, J. 58 van Gennep, A. 23 Vygotskiĭ, L. 81, 83 Wagner, P. 18, 19 weapons of the weak 74 Wei, J. 28, 31 Winner, L. 100, 105 Xidan Street 26, 27, 28, 30 zone of proximal development 81, 83