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“Wang, Leung, and Zhang’s collection is a timely contribution to utopian studies built on consistent, coherent, boundary-crossing approaches. Interdisciplinary in its very sense, the essays bring intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, and political theories together in dialogue. Of particular note are the essays that situate Hong Kong in a literary tradition that connects China, Hong Kong, and the beyond.” —Mingwei Song, Wellesley College
Utopianism contributed to the formation of the Chinese state itself—shaping the thought of key figures of the late Qing and early Republican eras such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen—and outlived the labyrinthine debates of the second half of the twentieth century, both under Mao’s rule and during the post-socialist era. Even in the current times of dystopian narratives, a period in which utopia seems to be less influential than in the past, its manifestations persistently provide lifelines against fatalism or cynicism. This collection shows how profoundly utopian ideas have nurtured both the thought of crucial figures during these historical times, the new generation of mainland Chinese and Sinophone intellectuals, and the hopes of twenty-first-century Hong Kong activists.
“Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context is an impressive intellectual undertaking. The essays are highly engaging and offer powerful, multi-faceted approaches to utopianism in contemporary Chinese thought and practice. Stimulating and informative, the book as a whole addresses the dynamic interplay between the utopian and dystopian, thereby inspiring clarity in political thought and action in the present moment.” —Robin Visser, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social engagement after it was introduced into the Chinese context in the nineteenth century. In fact, pursuit of utopia has often led to action—such as the Chinese Revolution and the Umbrella Movement—and contested consequences. Covering a time span that goes from the late Qing to our days, the authors show that few ideas have been as influencing as utopia, which has compellingly shaped the imaginaries that underpin China’s historical change.
David Der-wei Wang is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Angela Ki Che Leung is director and chair professor of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. Zhang Yinde is professor of comparative literature at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3.
Political Philosophy / Utopianism / China Studies
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Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context
Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context
Texts, Ideas, Spaces
Edited by David Der-wei Wang, Angela Ki Che Leung, and Zhang Yinde
This publication has been generously supported by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong https://hkupress.hku.hk © 2020 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8528-36-3 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Contents
Preface vii David Der-wei Wang
Prologue 1 The Formation and Evolution of the Concept of State in Chinese Culture Cho-yun Hsu (許倬雲) (University of Pittsburgh)
Part I. Discourses 1. Imagining “All under Heaven”: The Political, Intellectual, and Academic Background of a New Utopia
15
2. Liberalism and Utopianism in the New Culture Movement: Case Studies of Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi
36
3. The Panglossian Dream and Dark Consciouscness: Modern Chinese Literature and Utopia
53
Ge Zhaoguang (葛兆光) (Fudan University, Shanghai) (Translated by Michael Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke)
Peter Zarrow (沙培德) (University of Connecticut, USA)
David Der-wei Wang (王德威) (Harvard University, USA)
Part II. Provocations 4. Nihilism beneath Revolutionary Utopianism: On Wang Jingwei’s “Self-Willed Sacrifice” Xu Jilin (許紀霖) (Eastern China Normal University, Shanghai)
73
(Translated by Hang Tu)
5. The World in Common: Utopian or Cosmopolitan? A Remark on the Political Thought of Xiong Shili
83
6. Anticipatory Utopia and Redemptive Utopia in Postrevolutionary China
99
Huang Kuan-Min (黃冠閔) (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) Hang Tu (涂航) (Harvard University)
Part III. Fictional Interventions 7. Utopianism Is a Humanism: About Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy 117 Yinde Zhang (張寅德) (CEFC, Hong Kong/University of Sorbonne NouvelleParis 3, France)
vi Contents
8. The Spirit of Zhuangzi and the Chinese Utopian Imagination
129
9. Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia: Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction
147
Jianmei Liu (劉劍梅) (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
Shuang Xu (徐爽) (University of Paris Diderot, France) (Translated by Carlos Rojas)
Part IV. Hong Kong Horizons 10. From Silent China to Sonorous Hong Kong: A Literary Sketch
165
11. Before and after The Midnight After: Occupy Central’s Specters of Utopia and Dystopia
183
12. Legalistic and Utopian: Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement
196
Coda Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia: Theoretical Cross-examinations on Ideal, Reality, and Social Innovation
211
List of Contributors
223
Index
224
Chien-Hsin Tsai (蔡建鑫)
Carlos Rojas (羅鵬) (Duke University, USA)
Sebastian Veg (魏簡) (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences [EHESS], France)
Chan Koonchung (陳冠中)
Preface
David Der-wei Wang
Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces is a critical volume on the polemics of utopia vis-à-vis the changing reality of China and Sinophone communities. The volume is an independent project inspired by the international symposium on the same theme that took place at the University of Hong Kong in the spring of 2015. It comprises fourteen essays by an international ensemble of scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States, and France; some of them attended the symposium and developed their presentations into full-length essays while others wrote specifically for the project. Together, these essays form a dialogical inquiry into three areas concerning utopian studies: political critiques, spatial imageries, and emancipatory projects. The imagery of utopia, broadly defined as an idealist spatial construct vis-à-vis reality, was first introduced to China at the end of the nineteenth century. It found various manifestations in literary discourses, intellectual engagements, social institutions, cultural constructs, political manifestos, and, above all, revolutionary campaigns throughout the early decades of the modern age. While the tangled relations between utopia and reality have always invoked contestations, the “impulse” it generates, in Peter Zarrow’s words, has compelled generations of modern Chinese to conceive of, invent, and even carry out a variety of alternative realities in reaction to the status quo. Whereas anarchists longed for a polity above any form of governance, humanists imagined a community thriving on compassion and aesthetics; whereas neo-Confucians called for the rule of the kingly way, Communists propagated a revolution to overhaul reality once and for all. Meanwhile, history witnesses some of the most bitter ironies of modern China: utopian projects could beget dystopian outcomes; the path to the dreamland could lead to the living hell. The disintegration of socialist ideology, the devastations caused by the ultraliberal economy, and the threat of ecological and geopolitical disasters, explain the general disenchantment with and discredit of utopia today. It has become difficult to ignore the growing body of dystopian literature and arts published recently in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of the Sinophone world. Undoubtedly, these spatial and temporal projections of dystopia carry dark allegories about history and the present, suggesting that they take an ironic view of the current harmonious dreams of a powerful state. However, at the same time their critical awareness can be drowned out by apocalyptic fatalism or cynicism. The end of utopia and the retreat from politics have become a new vulgate.
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This volume acknowledges the dystopian trend worldwide since the end of the past century, but it proposes to reflect anew on the idea of utopia, analyzing how it has been debated, while at the same time emphasizing the persistence of utopianism and, particularly, its irreducible socially critical and politically imaginative function. For this purpose, three levels, text, thought, and society, are the volume’s areas of discussion. The contributors examine how various genres, discourses, ways of expression, including literature, social sciences, and visuals arts, independently and in interaction, have framed the debate on utopias in the Chinese context, drawing on a large corpus that runs from the modern period up to the present day. The volume aims at historicizing and problematizing both the essential and contingent aspects of utopia, paying particular attention to the political commitment to utopianism and the possibilities it provides in terms of building social spaces. The volume starts with a prologue by Professor Hsu Cho-yun. Through an overarching review of the political discourse in tradition China, Hsu sets the stage for the genesis of modern utopian thoughts and imaginaries in modern times. The main body of the volume is divided into four parts. Part I features three essays reflecting on the pros and cons of utopianisms appearing in different modern contexts. Ge Zhaoguang seeks to engage with the thought of tianxia (all under heaven), which has prevailed in premodern China and is making a postsocialist comeback thanks to the revival of political Confucianism. Peter Zarrow takes us to the early decades of modern China and reflects on the contested articulations of utopian thought, from Marxism to humanist meliorism. David Wang interrogates the optimistic inclination embedded in modern utopianisms, radical and conservative alike, and calls attention to a critical intervention through a framework of “dark consciousness.” Part II of the volume introduces select utopian provocations as demonstrated by Wang Jingwei, Xiong Shili, and Li Zehou, in the hopes of stimulating further discussion or debate. Xu Jilin takes up the case of Wang Jingwei, one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese history, attributing Wang’s unlikely cause of revolutionary martyrdom as treason to his early commitment to nihilism. Huang Kuan-Min guides us into the world of Confucian sage-kingship as envisaged by Xiong Shili and contemplates the implicit dialogue between New Confucianism and the Kantian paradigm of world peace. Hang Tu engages with two intertwined models of utopia, the anticipatory and the redemptive, using the case of Li Zehou, arguably the most popular philosopher in the new era (1980s). The third part calls attention to the literary nature of utopianism by reviewing post-socialist fiction. All three contributors to this section argue that, at a time when utopianism seems to have run out of energy in the political sphere, narrative fiction manages nevertheless to invoke new possibilities. Yinde Zhang undertakes an analysis of the contemporary novelist Ge Fei’s Jiagnnan Trilogy, which deals with revolutionary zeal and its distortion and eventual dissipation against Communist history. Zhang suggests that Ge Fei expresses his utopian vision negatively, thus revivifying the dialectic between despair and hope. Jianmei Liu traces out a different modern utopian genealogy in terms of the thought of Zhuangzi and detects its emancipatory vision and liberal thrust in works by writers such as Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, and Gao Xiangjian. Finally, Shuang Xu turns her focus to the “utopian impulse” as shown in contemporary internet literature. Through time-travel literature, she describes how the new genre and
Preface ix
the interactive mode of reading and writing have given rise to the new utopian body, thereby transforming the way we imagine gender, nationhood, and history. In the fourth part, we turn to Hong Kong as the site of conflict and conflation of contemporary utopian projects. This is a timely intervention given the rapidly changing politics of Hong Kong’s present and future. Media and mediality constitute the major concern of the three essays in the section. Chien-hsin Tsai tackles Lu Xun’s observation of Hong Kong as a “silent” space by identifying its soundscapes and finds in the cacophony on the island a sonorous vision of utopia. Carlos Rojas analyzes the renowned director Fruit Chan’s film about Occupy Central in 2011–2012, The Midnight After. He points out the spectral motif that haunts not only the film but also the event, and reflects on the utopian and dystopian visions implied in Chan’s cinematic “apocalypse now.” Sebastian Veg, in contrast, takes a linguistic-cum-sociological approach to the slogans and manifestos being circulated in Occupy Central and argues for the imaginative and emancipatory power of language versus politics. Last but not least, the volume features Chan Koon-chung’s “Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia” as an epilogue. Chan is among the most articulate public intellectuals from Hong Kong. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s concept of “heterotopia,” he ventures to imagine a space that is neither utopian nor dystopian but that thrives on the phantasmagoric terrain of change and changeability. Heterotopia is as much a “nonspace” as it is a “supraspace,” continuously acting out and being acted on by historical possibilities. The volume is edited by David Der-wei Wang of Harvard University, together with Angela Ki Che Leung of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Yinde Zhang of University Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They were also the organizers of the symposium held at The University of Hong Kong on March 21–22, 2015. David Wang was appointed by HKU as Hung Leung Hau Ling Distinguished Fellow in Humanities from July 1, 2014, to December 31, 2015. Special thanks are due to the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences of HKU, Hong Kong French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), Hung Hings Ying & Leung Hau Ling Charitable Foundation, and Hong Kong University Press, and to Ms. Clara Ho of Hong Kong University Press and Mr. Tu Hang of Harvard University for editorial assistance. Most importantly, the editors would like to thank all symposium participants and volume contributors for making this project possible.
Prologue The Formation and Evolution of the Concept of State in Chinese Culture
Cho-yun Hsu
The collective that we call the sovereign state has emerged numerous times in the course of human history around the world. This is certainly true in the case of China. Most of what we know about these states comes from historical sources, many of them quite legendary and certainly useful. Still, alternative sources exist that may yield new and exciting knowledge. It may even have the potential to radically change how we understand the concept of the state in Chinese history. Archaeological sources prove quite useful to this task, as Kwang-chih Chang showed so many years ago, particularly for early Chinese history. Let us, then, emphasize archeological findings over legendary sources in order to explore the development of the concept of state in ancient China. The bone oracles in Shang archeology offer a good place to start. In the past century, archaeological sites have yielded to the world a large number of inscribed oracle bones. From these artifacts and other archeological findings exhumed at Shang sites, analysts have concluded that, by all appearances, the Shang kingdom was a conquest state. The repository of Shang artifacts discovered include what appears to be a large number of human sacrifices. These sacrifices include both workers who built the Shang mausoleums that make up many of the Shang excavation sites and soldiers who guarded the resting places of the dead kings buried in them. This phenomenon, archaeologists have determined, attests to the disregard that Shang rulers had for human life. The objects exhumed at other Shang excavation sites attest to the reach of state authority and the wealth the state gained from it. The large quantity of valuables unearthed there indicates the power of the Shang ruling class to collect massive amounts of resources from the areas under its control. A sizable number of remains lies distant from the location of the Shang capital, in places where strategic outposts for garrisoned troops once stood. These garrisons were built not only to protect frontiers but also for the purpose of controlling sources of wealth. To illustrate, oracle-bone inscriptions discovered at these sites record the long “inspection tours” that the king and his army took through the distant regions under his subjugation for the purpose of forcefully exacting tributes and gifts from the local peoples living adjacent to Shang garrisons. The lengthy statements found on many bone inscriptions include many references to questions posed by Shang scribes, such as “Are there any particular spirits causing
2 Prologue
troubles?” The term “spirits” here could indicate deceased ancestors, or it could denote spirits of some natural power. Nothing suggests the existence of any particular phenomenon such as the judgment of spiritual powers—that is, a transcendental authority beyond the human realm—upon human behavior.1 In the twelfth century BCE, the Shang kingdom was overthrown by the combined strength of lesser forces led by Zhou, a small tribal state on Shang’s western border. After their triumph over the powerful Shang, the leaders of Zhou claimed that their victory resulted from the blessings of a mandate to rule the world that heaven (tian) had bestowed upon them; by the same reasoning, the Shang defeat proved that heaven had revoked it from the vanquished. This claim of the “Mandate of Heaven” constitutes the earliest documented instance of a new ruling elite laying claim to a transcendental value as a form of political propaganda to assert its political legitimacy.2 Surviving references to the Zhou dynasty in the Book of Documents (Shangshu) include several pieces of royal instruction to dynastic descendants as well as to royal subjects, admonishing them not to follow the Shang precedent of indulgence in drinking, maltreatment of people, and engagement in corruption. If they persisted, they warned, heaven would withdraw its mandate and bestow it upon a worthier candidate, as it had in the past.3 Indeed, the archeological data reveals, in a comparison of relics, that Shang utensils include a large number of bronze wine vessels such as cups and urns while Zhou utensils comprise very few. The same is true when it comes to evidence of human sacrifice: Zhou archeological sites have seldom yielded human sacrificial remains. In other words, the archeological evidence of these two cultures indeed verifies in some sense the Zhou claim to morally “better” behavior than their Shang predecessors. In particular, two excavated Zhou bronze vessels yield some interesting information that pertains to this matter or morality. On a vessel called “Dafeng Gui” 大豐簋, cast during a very early part of Zhou dynastic history, inscribed text states that the Zhou victory over the Shang confirmed that heaven had given its mandate to the Zhou to establish a new dynasty. An inscription on a different vessel called “Hezun” 何尊, cast at about the same time the Zhou dynasts founded their eastern capital in former Shang territory, proclaims that the new royal capital was now established in the center of the known world. The inscribed phrase “hereby we settle here in the ‘center land’” is the earliest extant reference in which the name Zhongguo—literally, the “central realm,” or by logical extension, “kingdom”—appeared as the Chinese name for China, the Central Kingdom. The allusion to a “Heavenly Chamber” on the Hezun vessel likely refers to the highest peak on the old capital’s surrounding central plain, which evidently featured the sacred place that earned it the place name Mount Heavenly Chamber. I assume that this name survives from that early date so as to indicate that this “center of the world” marks the sacred place where the God of heaven dwelled. 1. For general information on the Shang history and archaeology, see Kwang-Chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980). 2. For general information on Zhou history, see Choyun Hsu and Katharine Linduff, Western Chou Civilization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 3. For examples, see the chapters “Wu yi” 無逸 [Against luxurious ease] and “Jiu gao” 酒誥 [Announcement on alcohol] in Kong Anguo 孔安國, Zhou shu 周書 [Book of Zhou], in Shangshu zhengyi 尚書正義 [The correct meaning of the Book of Documents], annotated by Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007).
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Chinese classical texts as early as the beginning of the seventh century BCE mention that the Zhou’s founding sovereign, Xibo 西伯 (Lord of the West), was known for taking good care of elders. This claim was often related to stories that he recruited capable assistants who helped him to organize a benevolent state for the sake of the fulfilling the Heavenly Mandate.4 The Zhou kingdom was a feudal network of royal lineages. Many of the feudal states that belonged to this political arrangement were built by descendants or kinsmen stationed across a large expanse of territory, sharing the sovereignty of the royal house. Such a network cannot be called a monarchy; I should rather consider it a network of rulers. As time went by, the duality of lineages and networks of rule evolved so as to absorb and adapt to the local vassals of those lords who were stationed at various places. During about 400 years of continuous rule, the royal domain of the Zhou repeatedly suffered from natural as well as human disasters. Severe earthquake and long-term climate change caused difficult environmental conditions. Additionally, large numbers of immigrants pressured by adverse weather patterns developing in Asia encroached upon the Zhou royal domain. All of these challenges caused the Zhou regime to face great difficulties in maintaining its sovereignty over its homeland. By 770 BCE the last king of Zhou, You, had lost the capital. His son fled to the kingdom’s eastern plain, which was a new territory where vassal states were established. As previously mentioned, the old Shang territory had been regarded as the center of the world. The refugee eastern royal court did not have enough strength to command authority over the established vassal states. Some two dozen of these vassal states began to compete for supremacy. The interstate wars this sparked—in addition to the expansionist campaigns of several states to seize lands beyond the Zhou domain—ensured a half millennium of continuous turmoil. Without its solid Zhou core, the old feudal network simply could not survive as a coherent political community. Social mobility allowed individuals to move up and down the hierarchy of power, the defeated in these struggles losing their status and the winners gaining power to control more resources. The accumulated effect of drastic social mobility finally caused the whole system to collapse. As a consequence, the entire feudal society simply disintegrated.5 With the change in political and social order came ideological change. The Spring and Autumn period (722–481 BCE) in Chinese history occurred during the Axial Age, identified by Karl Jaspers, during which emerged great thinkers who systematically defined transcendental values in the changing nature and ideal functions of social and political order. Laozi (老子 fl. ca. 571–471 BCE) and Confucius (孔子 550–479 BCE), the two most important Chinese thinkers of this age, laid down the ideals that would contribute to the discourse of governance in traditional China for thousands of years. Their political thought developed in the context of the great turmoil that defined China’s Spring and Autumn era. People yearned to achieve a political and social order stable enough to at least improve an individual’s chance of survival. In this climate, Laozi and Confucius each tried to determine what, in their estimation, would be the best form of community in which their society could live. 4. See “Lilou, shang” 離婁上 [Lilou, part one] and “Jinxin, shang” 盡心上 [Jinxin, part one], in Jiao Xun 焦循, Mengzi zhengyi 孟子正義 [The correct meaning of Mencius] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962). 5. For general information on social and institutional changes during this period of Chinese history, see Choyun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965).
4 Prologue
Laozi based his efforts to redefine the complex political system in which he lived on the assertion that a society functions best in a state of anarchy. Ideally, he said, societies comprise numerous smaller communities that coexist so closely together that, in one village, the bark of a dog and the crow of a rooster could be heard by neighboring villages. Yet each community need not communicate with the other, in spite of their proximity. Laozi never specified whether these autonomous communities should include a governing body with a leader or some other kind of authority.6 But he was adamant that the answer to the problem of his age, the political instability of internecine competition, would come from below, not from above. In contrast, Confucius devised the concept of an ideal social order that envisions a community well administered by morally worthy elites who serve the state under the auspices of its benevolent monarch. At all levels of state, governing functionaries should be men of good character who cultivate self-discipline and self-reflection. Confucius instructed his disciples in the different categories of skills that he believed to be essential to proper administration: literacy, rhetoric, military skills, and a discipline that nurtures noble behaviors such as self-discipline, compassion, and respect for heaven. He thought that the last of these skill categories was the fundamental qualification for the administration of a state. On two different occasions, Confucius demonstrated such preferences for cultivated skills to his disciples. For example, when he once asked his students what was their goal of learning, one student replied that he would like to be a commander who could pacify a sizable state, a second student claimed that he would like to be a good mayor who could bring education to his people, and a third student declared that he wanted to attain knowledge in order to effectively demonstrate to the people how to respect Great Nature. Confucius did not offer his approval to any of them. Then, a fourth student answered that he wanted to pay attention to the nurturing of internal character by staying in complete harmony with the cosmos. Confucius finally responded, “I agree with you.”7 On another occasion, Confucius told his students that self-education begins with the cultivation of good character: understanding others as you understand yourself, exhibiting compassion and sincerity, and always behaving properly, so that the practitioner can live with others in a harmonious manner. Once mastered, however, what goal should such a self-cultivated person pursue? With that in mind, his students asked him, “What then to follow?” He said, “Take good care of the elders, help to nurture and educate the young ones, let grown people have a good chance to develop, and help the destitute, disabled, and disadvantaged.” His students replied, “Then what?” He said, “Help those near you to live in security.” The students repeated, “And then what?” To which he responded, “Help your people to live in security.” “And then what?” “Help the people in the world to live in security.” “And then what?” Confucius said, “Even the most important sage king in history could not reach this goal easily.” His conceptualization of the ideal good state in which the people could live begins with self-cultivation; once achieved, it motivates efforts to help others live in peace. Confucius thus offers a 6. See Laozi 老子, Laozi Daodejing zhu 老子道德經注 [Laozi’s Classic on the Way, annotated] (Taipei: Yiwen yin shu guan, 1970), chapter 80. 7. “Xianjin pian” 先進篇 [Chapter on men of former times], in He Yan 何晏, Lunyu jijue 論語集解 [Collected explanations of the Analects] (Xinbei: Guangwen shuju, 1991), 24.
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very proactive approach to the problem of creating good government, in contrast to Laozi’s laissez-faire strategy.8 Indeed, the ideas of Laozi and Confucius developed in the late Spring and Autumn period, when society and politics on the Central Plain were still in great turmoil. Politically, the royal court of Zhou was nearly powerless in relation to its numerous nominally vassal states. Into the power vacuum ventured the stronger vassal states competing with each other for hegemony over all the others. During the five centuries this period lasted, there were a half a dozen or so rulers who expanded their power and earned recognition as interstate leaders. The very first of these interstate leaders was the Duke Huan of Qi 齊桓公 (r. 685–643 BCE), who ruled the state of Qi at the very eastern end of the Central Plain. Having survived a succession struggle to defeat his brothers for control of Qi, the duke reorganized the state into an autocratic government with the assistance of several very capable followers. He took the old feudal system and reorganized it into a hierarchy of administrative units under the direct governance of his court. He divided his entire state into twenty-one districts; he retained direct command over eleven of them and handed the governance of the remaining ten to two of his major lieutenants. Duke Huan employed a very capable chancellor named Guan Zhong 管仲 (725–605 BCE), who had been raised in Qi as a war captive and who earned a reputation as an adult that eventually led him to the duke, where he rose to become one of his primary advisors and helpers. The duke enlisted the services of a number of assistants from a variety of backgrounds. To each he assigned a function that matched their aptitude and training. In other words, Duke Huan created a government of “specialists” rather than simply a state composed of highly ranked nobles. Doing so, the duke was able to streamline governance so as to effectively utilize resources and make his state the most powerful in the region. As a consequence, the state of Qi managed to create a stable order in the Zhou world by defending it internally and protecting it from foreign encroachment from either north or south.9 Confucius lived shortly after Duke Huan’s death. He repeatedly expressed his admiration of the philosopher Guan Zhong, attributing to him the important accomplishment of protecting the “civilized world.” In this way, he implicitly regarded the state reorganized by Duke Huan and Guan Zhong as a necessary replacement of the old Zhou feudal system, which he believed had grown antiquated. In other words, Confucius preferred the duke’s autocratic state, which could serve the function of creating a certain state of peace in which people could live.10 Under Duke Huan’s hegemony, the old feudal network of Zhou underwent a gradual change. Every subsequent hegemon made an effort to expand his territory in a similar fashion, by annexing neighboring states. Over the course of a three-century period of adjustment, the feudal system of states had evolved into a de facto multistate community consisting of seven major powers (plus a few minor ones). By 471 BCE a succession of rulers in each of these seven powerful states proclaimed that their 8. Gong Ye Chang pian 公冶長篇 [Chapter on Gongzhi Zhang], in Lunyu jijue, 26; Xianwen pian 憲問篇 [Chapter on Xian’s questions], in He, Lunyu jijue, 42. 9. For summary of the episode of Duke Huan and Guan Zhong, see Xu Yuanhao 徐元浩, “Qi yu” [Discourses on Qi], in Guoyu jijue 國語集解 [Collected explanations of the Discourse on States] (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1930). 10. Xian wen [Chapter on Xian’s questions], in He, Lunyu jijue, 17.
6 Prologue
sovereign was the king of all the independent realms. In the meantime, the nominal overlord of the Zhou order simply withered away. Thus began a new era, lasting from 471 until 221 BCE, when one king finally unified China’s rival states into its first unified empire, Qin 秦, which is known in Chinese history as the Warring States era. New forms of state and statecraft developed during this period, usually after competing rulers made successive efforts at state reform, learning from each other’s experiences and building stronger states capable of repelling and vanquishing their rivals. These monarchies and sovereign states were very similar to the modern nation-states of the Western world that appeared after the seventeenth century. During the Warring States era, several schools of thought developed theories that would help the reconstruction of state order. Confucianism was the mainstay. The great master Mengzi (Mencius) 孟子 (376–289 BCE) adopted the legend that Xi Bo 西伯, the benevolent leader who founded the Zhou dynasty, gained popular support because he was known for taking good care of his elders. Mengzi expanded this practice further, seeing that every household would be granted sufficient resources and a reasonable livelihood. The basic need of each household, he noted, should consist of one hundred mu of farmland, with mulberry trees, chickens, and hogs to produce additional food. Living accordingly, a household of five persons could enjoy sufficient food and clothing, including meeting the needs of elders who were no longer productive.11 In another version, after Mengzi had the opportunity of an audience with the royal court of one of these feuding states, he added another condition for being a great leader: all good states should take care of the aged, widows, orphans, and destitute people by providing them with sufficient support.12 During the time of the Warring States, reformers in the various states of the Central Plain often recommended the establishment of a professional administrative bureaucracy and governance by law. These officials, along with some scholars, have historically been grouped together since the Han period as the Fajia 法家, the “schools of administration theories,” or, better known, the Legalist school. In the last phase of the Warring States period, Confucian ideas merged with those of the Legalists; the Confucian scholar Xunzi 荀子 (313–238 BCE) is credited for doing much of this synthesis. One of his best disciples, Han Fei 韓非 (280–233 BCE), later produced the most comprehensive summary of Fajia, or Legalist, thought. Another one of Xunzi’s students, Li Si 李斯 (280–208 BCE), was the advisor and chancellor to the king of Zheng, Ying Zheng, who in 221 BCE declared himself Qin Shi Huang, the “First Emperor of Qin,” after he subjugated all of the Warring States into a unified empire, ending an era of war and chaos, and creating a political system that would govern the region for more than 2,000 years to come. Xunzi and his contemporaries developed new theories of state formation and function and put them into practice. Xunzi emphasized that his goal of a good state was twofold: to become rich (fu 富) and strong (qiang 疆). The former meant sufficient resources acquired and produced to allow people to live well, creating a secure environment. The latter meant strength enough to defend itself and to provide peace and 11. “Jin xin, shang” 盡心上 [Exhausting the heart, part one], in Mengzi 孟子, Mengzi 孟子 [Mencius] (Beijing: Huayu jiaoxue chubanshe, 1999), 22. 12. “Liang Huiwang, shang” 梁惠王上 [King Hui of Liang, part one], in Mengzi, Mengzi, 3, 5.
Cho-yun Hsu 7
security to its people so that they could be productive. He identified a key agent in implementing these two functions: the civil servant, who exhibited himself as supremely educated, capable, uncorrupted, and dedicated to the affairs of his state.13 This idea of a state led by responsible and ethical leaders, as described in two chapters of the Xunzi, brings to mind the biblical “good shepherd” or the Confucianist model that Lee Kuan Yew 李光耀 has developed in Singapore. Confucius always concerned himself with the idea that the cosmic order and the human world should be kept in coherence. In principle, the property of li 禮 always forms a framework for organized, harmonious social function. Li, according to Confucius, consists of proper manners and behaviors, in particular the proper arrangement of rituals serving cosmic powers and ancestors. This emphasis brought a certain religiosity into otherwise worldly social ethics. When Mengzi mentioned the proper way to gather resources to nurture people’s livelihoods, he said that people could collect firewood and other wooden material from the forest only at appropriate times. He instructed woodcutters to collect fallen trees and weathered branches in the fall and winter so that the forests could be preserved. He also said that fisherman should not use densely woven fishnets, so that young fish would be spared from being caught.14 These environmental conservation ideas in Confucian philosophy derived from its central concern for achieving and maintaining a coherent relationship between the human world and the cosmic order. In this way, people would not exhaust available resources through overuse. The very rich collection of essays attributed to Guanzi 管子—also known as Guan Zhong 管仲, mentioned above—was not compiled by Guan Zhong himself, nor by anyone else during his lifetime. Traditionally, Chinese historiography dates the Guanzi sometime near the end of the Warring States period. In this collection, one finds essays from different schools, so that the same episodes may be rendered in different versions, thus offering different perspectives. I suggest that Guanzi’s name has been used for this book because Guanzi helped the Qi state to establish its hegemony during the Spring and Autumn period. On the eve of unification, during the time of the Warring States, scholars and leaders anticipated the emergence of a universal order, tianxia 天下. One of these leaders was the king of Qi, Xuan 齊宣王 (r. 350–301 BCE), who invited many renowned scholars of his time to form an academy, which he called Jixia 稷下, to advise him on how to build a universal order. Among these scholars, both Mengzi and Xuanzi were prominent members. Several chapters of the Guanzi elaborate on similar propositions to achieve the formation of a strong state to secure its enduring function. The reader may emphasize the recruitment of worthy people to serve the state, organizing a state in which a privileged aristocracy is replaced by professional civil servants.15 These chapters also emphasize the importance of building a state that could function to provide people with the necessary resources for their well-being, so that they would in turn be willing to better serve the state. Readers may also find chapters that deal with how to identify those in need
13. “Fu guo” 富國 [Enriching the kingdom], in Xunzi 荀子 [Master Xun], 2; and “Qiang guo” 疆國 [Strengthen ing the kingdom], in Xunzi, 3. 14. “Liang Huiwang, shang” 梁惠王上 [King Hui of Liang, part one], in Mengzi, Mengzi, 1.3. 15. “Li zheng” 立政 [Overseeing the government], in Guan Zhong, Guanzi 管子 [Master Guan] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang shuju, 1876), 3–6.
8 Prologue
of the state’s help—namely the aged, the ill, and the weak, the orphaned and widowed, and the poor and destitute—to provide them with state support.16 Other than those schools of political thought that emphasize the proactivity of governors, the one polemical school often challenged governing authority. These were the scholars categorized as Daoists. Laozi proposed leaving communities totally alone to function without communication or contact with their neighbors. Similar attitudes can be found in Guanzi, in passages that praise laissez-faire governance, or rather nongovernance. Some Daoist scholars advocated achieving internal peace within one’s own mind by applying the principles of nondoing and nonaction.17 This individualistic, inner-directed focus nevertheless could not help the Daoists establish balance against the positive proactive attitudes of Confucian scholars. China was unified in 222 BCE under the First Emperor of Qin, whose regime established an autocratic government served by a large bureaucracy. This new government was the result of a gradual evolution from the combined structures of formerly contending states. Naturally, during the Warring States era the experiments of various rival states were adopted, as well as the theories and the practice proposed by the Legalist scholars discussed above. Two generations later, massive revolutions overthrew the Qin, whose new state had quickly come to be seen as despotic. The new dynasty, Han 漢 (202 BCE–220 CE), created a regime that would last about 400 years and offer the fundamental model of government to all subsequent Chinese dynasties. At least during the first half century or so, however, for the sake of recovering from the long years of war and disturbances, the policies of the earliest reign periods of the Han dynasty were laissez-faire in practice. The Han government consisted of an imperial court led by a chancellor and a cabinet composed of ministries, along with an inspector general who presided over a board of inspectors that monitored government activities including those of the emperor. The empire was administered by scores of provincial governments and thousands of county offices. The central government appointed governors and magistrates but did not select them from among the local population of their assigned administrative units. However, the government did select locals to staff local governments, conditional on local recommendations that verified they were worthy and capable. Periodically, worthy members of local staff would be recommended for selection as a court attendant in the imperial court. Thus, these attendants provided the state with a reserve pool from which the government could train and select officials to fill junior positions in the imperial bureaucracy. Communities below the county level formed de facto autonomous entities. Thousands of local records written on bamboo or wooden strips, discovered by archaeologists at various excavation sites, reveal that village elders and community leaders acted as the main figures in the management of local affairs and as the nerve endings of the empire’s vast administration network. In other words, the Han empire was an organization consisting of two interactive parts, an overarching imperial officialdom and networks of locally centered communities led by their own elite.
16. “Mu min” 牧民 [Shepherding the people], in Guan, Guanzi, 4; “Ru guo” 入國 [Entering the capital], 1–10. 17. “Bai xin” 白心 [Purifying the mind], in Guan, Guanzi, 4; “Xin shu, xia” 心術下 [The art of mind, part two], in Guan, Guanzi, 4.
Cho-yun Hsu 9
After the Han regime had stabilized during the second century BCE, new generations of scholars, especially Confucians, began to debate about the best form of government. The Liji 禮記 (Book on rites), an anthology of writings by Han Confucian scholars, has preserved for us numerous ideas as part of their discourse. For example, in the chapter “Liyun” 禮運, a section called “The Great Harmony” describes the ideal state and the utopia it creates. In this utopia, the capable and worthy are chosen to administer the world so that the young can enjoy the opportunity to grow; adults the opportunity to put their capabilities to use; and the aged, orphans, disabled, and destitute good care. People work hard to fully develop and utilize their capabilities to serve the needs of others rather than their own interests. Resources are put to good use and their circulation is encouraged, not monopolized by any single individual or group. The guiding principle of living together, according to the “Great Harmony,” should be mutual trust and collegiality. This is what the Liji names the “World of Great Harmony” 大同之世.18 The next section of the Liji notes that such Great Harmony is difficult to achieve; one step below it lies the “World of Minor Tranquility” 小康之世. In this world, authority and law guard the people. The boundaries of states and the ownership of property are protected. Nevertheless, there was no way to prevent deception and exploitation. Even minor tranquility is not easily achieved, except during the reign of the legendary Sage Kings.19 The discussion presented in these two sections, which consists of fictional dialogues between Confucius and his disciples, followed with long sections that discuss the importance of ritual observance: how to worship divine cosmic forces, honor ancestry, follow the cycle of seasonal change, and commemorate different stages of life. It asserts that by properly performing these rituals, individuals may embody and resonate with the great cosmic order and thus nurture their own personal character, which will then merge into the great cosmos.20 This relationship between the individual and the larger cosmic order parallels the observance of sacraments in Christian theology, which enables people to gain appreciation for divine providence. In the early Han period, Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–106 BCE) constructed another Confucian cosmological system: he envisioned the entire cosmos as an elaborate allinclusive network in which every part is woven into an interactive system. The entire system constantly changes to dialectically readjust its interrelated functions until a dynamic equilibrium is reached.21 Such a cosmic order comprehensively includes all parts in all spheres, the natural as well the human ones. The equilibrium creates a universal and eternal commonwealth of coherence and harmony. With such a dynamic cosmic order as their backdrop, it would be logical for the Han Confucians to relate the possibility of achieving the Great Harmony to the observance of propriety in a coherent cosmic order, as presented in the “Liyun” section of the Liji. Parallel to such a proposition, the Daoist “anarchists” proposed another kind of utopia in which there was no law and no authority; instead, everybody simply lived 18. “Li yun” 禮運 [The conveyance of rituals], in Kong Yingda, 孔穎達, Liji zhengyi 禮記正義 [The correct meaning of the Book of Rites] (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2003), 1. 19. Ibid., 2. 20. Ibid., 3–8, 13–15. 21. Dong’s masterpiece is Chunqiu fanlu 春秋繁露 [The rich dew of the Spring and Autumn Classic]. For illustrations of his theories, see chapters such as “Tonglei xiangdong” 同類相動 [The interactivity of similar things] and “Xun tian zhi dao” 循天之道 [Conforming to heaven’s way].
10 Prologue
in accordance with the Daoist order of nature. This society remains close but isolated from its neighboring communities, of course. Such a community is not a state, although it does realize a kind of political order. A short description of just such an order is reflected in a song, which apparently describes the golden age that existed before the time of the sages: “When the sun rises, we start work. When the sun sets, we rest. We drink from the well and we have food which we produce by our own labor; what more could the King Yao do for us?”22 By the third century CE, when China had fallen into chaos with the collapse of the Han dynasty in the face of the invasions of the north steppe tribes, the unrest around the whole of China made people yearn for a haven. They dreamed of an idealized land that the writer Tao Qian 陶潛 (365–427) later described as a legendary community he called the Land of the Peach Blossoms. This community, hidden in a deep valley, had sealed itself from the outside world, so that disturbances around the world had no impact on it. It is said that, once a fisherman discovered such a paradise but later left, he never had the chance to return. From then on, for nearly 2,000 years, the Chinese transitioned from one dynasty to another. None of these dynasties, with the exception of a few “golden ages,” came close to realizing the condition of Minor Tranquility. The dream of the Land of the Peach Blossoms remained simply a dream; it was never actualized. From the Han dynasty on, however, the tradition of Confucian education sustained China’s Confucian literati. From these cultural elites, who did not inherit their power in the same way the aristocrats did, governments recruited their civil servants. The bureaucracy of imperial government thus became more or less like a meritocracy despite the interference of imperial despotic powers. A large number of such elites, who instead of serving the government preferred to remain in their home communities, helped to establish communal order at the local level by nurturing self-cultivation and maintaining stability through persuasion rather than state coercion. Allow me to share with you some of my own memories. During the first half of the twentieth century, in my hometown, Wuxi 無錫, the local “gentry,” namely the people who earned the respect of locals as a result of their character and scholarship, were the main body for organizing various kinds of activities to serve the community. They raised money from industry and business circles to support orphanages, shelters for homeless, nursing homes for elders, scholarships for students, and stipends for widows who had no means. Such efforts at the county level can be traced back continuously at least two hundred years in my locality’s history. The last leader of the Wuxi gentry is Qian Jibo 錢基博, the uncle of the renowned scholar Qian Zhongshu 錢鍾書. Confucian literati served as bureaucrats—sometimes even for despotic regimes— yet in their own minds they often carved out their own internal haven, their own Land of the Peach Flower Blossoms. In other words, conscientious Confucian scholars often faced the dilemma of whether to opt in and serve the government or to opt out and realize their own dream of paradise, at least in their inner selves. It is a pity to say that those who have opted in more often than not forgot their original intentions and became instruments of despotism. Those who opted out often felt frustrated that the impacts of their efforts were so temporary and so limited. Many of these cultural elites 22. Wang Cong 王充, “Gan xu” 感虛 [Fictitious influences], in Lunheng 論衡 [Weighing discourse] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2007), 69.
Cho-yun Hsu 11
instead constructed their own havens in literature or in thought. For this reason, both the dream of Great Harmony and the lesser dream of the Land of the Peach Blossoms appeared in poems, stories and philosophical discourses instead of in real life. Since the time of the Han dynasty, Chinese have wished for a form of collectivity characterized by a harmonious and secure order, wherein group security and individual freedom are well balanced. As with other civilizations, however, such dreams remain forever unfulfilled. In Chinese history, every time a regime was overthrown, new revolutionaries would promise a new order, and this new order would eventually degrade into another despotic tyranny. It left idealists perennially faced with the choice to opt in or opt out of government, and more often than not they were left simply frustrated.
Bibliography Chang, Kwang-Chih. Shang Civilization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980. Guan, Zhong. Guanzi 管子 [Master Guan]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang shuju, 1876. He Yan 何晏. Lunyu jijue 論語集解 [Collected explanations of the Analects]. Xinbei: Guangwen shuju, 1991. Hsu, Choyun. Ancient China in Transition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965. Hsu, Choyun, and Katharine Linduff. Western Chou Civilization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Jiao Xun 焦循. Mengzi zhengyi 孟子正義 [The correct meaning of Mencius]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962. Kong Anguo 孔安國. Zhou shu 周書 [Book of Zhou]. In Shangshu zhengyi 尚書正義 [The correct meaning of the Book of Documents], annotated by Kong Yingda 孔穎達. Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2007. Kong, Yingda 孔穎達. Liji zhengyi 禮記正義 [The correct meaning of the Book of Rites]. Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2003. Laozi 老子. Laozi Daodejing zhu 老子道德經注 [Laozi’s Classic on the Way, annotated]. Taipei: Yiwen yin shu guan, 1970. Mengzi 孟子. Mengzi 孟子 [Mencius]. Beijing: Huayu jiaoxue chubanshe, 1999. Wang, Chong 王充. “Gan xu” 感虛 [Fictitious influences]. In Lunheng 論衡 [Weighing discourse]. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2007. Xu Yuanhao 徐元浩. “Qi Yu” [Discourses on Qi]. In Guoyu jijie 國語集解 [Collected explanations of the Discourse on States]. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1930.
Part I Discourses
1
Imagining “All under Heaven” The Political, Intellectual, and Academic Background of a New Utopia
Ge Zhaoguang Translated by Michael Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke
For the past decade or so in China, people have been repeatedly writing about a future world utopia—a utopia called “all under heaven” or the “Chinese world order” (tianxia 天下).1 Such discourse, whether it is about a philosophized world system (tianxia tixi 天下體系), a politicized world order (tianxia zhixu 天下秩序), or a conceptualized Sinocentrism (tianxia zhuyi 天下主義), has been not only abundant but also very influential.2 Its influence has been felt more acutely as more and more people have come to question the validity of the present world order led by the United States. Under these conditions, some people have asserted that a “Chinese world order” as a substitute program could bring fairness, equality, and peace to the international community of the future. With the so-called rise of China (Zhongguo jueqi), some Chinese scholars have already been discussing “the Chinese moment in world history.” They assert that the nineteenth century belonged to Great Britain and the twentieth century belonged to the United States, so the twenty-first century is the Chinese century. Since this is the Chinese century, then China should naturally assume leadership of the world order. According to their theories, this new Chinese-led world order would simply re-establish the ancient Chinese world order of “all under heaven” (tianxia). They argue that tianxia as described in ancient China represents the ideal that the entire world is one family in both the ethical and the political-science sense. But was it really like that?
1. This kind of discourse is quite abundant; here are a few important examples. Sheng Hong, Wei wanshi kai taiping 為萬世開太平 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999; rev. ed. Zhongguo fazhan chubanshe, 2010); Zhao Tingyang, Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲學導論 [A system of Tianxia: Introduction into world system philosophy] (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005); Yao Zhongqiu, Huaxia zhixu zhili shi 華夏秩序治理史 [A history of Chinese political order and governance] (Haikou: Hainan chubanshe, 2012), vol. 1; Gan Chunsong, Chonghui Wangdao—Rujia yu shijie zhixu 重回王道—儒家 與世界秩序 [Returning to the way of the king: Confucianism and the world order] (Shanghai: Huadong shida chubanshe, 2012); Li Yangfan, Yongdong de tianxia: Zhongguo shijieguan bianqian shilun 湧動的天下: 中國世界觀變遷史論 1500–1911 [Changing Tianxia: A history of Chinese worldviews, 1500–1911] (Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chubanshe, 2012). 2. Most of the time we translate tianxia zhuyi (lit. “tianxia-ism,” or “all under heaven-ism”) as Sinocentrism, because the idea of Sinocentrism lies in the background of these theories about a new utopia.—Trans.
16
Imagining “All under Heaven”
“All under Heaven” in Chinese History: Inside and Outside, Chinese and Barbarians, Superiors, and Inferiors Originally, I did not intend to discuss the history of the concept of tianxia, or “all under heaven,” because, for historians, it is common knowledge. However, given that numerous scholars who arbitrarily deploy the term tianxia with little knowledge of its use in history, I have no choice but to revisit the history of the ancient concept. I wanted to see what sort of “ahistorical” history was actually being purveyed by these new theories of tianxia. One interpretation of tianxia is most imaginative. This is the idea that the ancient Chinese concept of “all under heaven” offers a certain historical experience for our modern world because it was a world in which the “ten thousand nations lived in peace and harmony” (wanbang xiehe). As Guo Yi writes, “If we want to realize genuinely stable unity in the political and cultural realms, we must employ the stance of Confucian Sinocentrism (tianxia zhuyi) and implement the Kingly Way (wangdao) in government and in the tianxia program.”3 Is there any historical evidence to support such an idea about tianxia? Not at all. We already have considerably abundant and relevant historical sources and much modern scholarship on the ancient Chinese concept. Japanese scholars from Ogawa Takuji and Abe Takeo to Shinichirō Watanabe and Chinese scholars like Xing Yitian and Luo Zhitian have all written about the historical problem of tianxia. All of their writings emphasize one key point: the ancient Chinese tianxia always incorporated such meanings as “us” and “the other,” “inner” and “outer,” “Hua” (Chinese) and “Yi” (non-Chinese)—that is, simply China and its “four borders.” This means that within this concept of tianxia, a distinction was made not only between China’s center and its four borders but also in ethnic consciousness between “inner” (central) and “outer” (marginal). Furthermore, in cultural terms, the distinction extended to Hua (civilized Chinese) and Yi (uncivilized barbarians), and in political status, another distinction was drawn between “superiors” (rulers) and “inferiors” (those who obey the rulers). As a consequence: Everywhere under Heaven, Nothing is not the king’s land. To the borders of the all those lands, No one is not the king’s slave.4
The key to the Confucian discourse on tianxia is the idea that “all under heaven” is vast, and “within the four seas only one man receives all honors.”5 The idea of an undifferentiated realm about which so many of us today think so highly—in which, “in all under heaven, far and near, large and small are all one”—is nothing more than the ideal of ancient scholars, especially those who belonged to the Gongyang school. In reality, if we examine the ancient classical texts, we will learn that ever since the era of the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou, c. 2070–256 BCE), territory beyond the “central states” 3. Guo Yi, “Tianxia zhuyi: Shijie zhixu chongjian de Rujia fang-an” 天下主義:世界秩序重建的儒家方案 [Tianxia-ism: a Confucian proposal to rebuild the world order], Renmin ribao, xueshu qianyan, March 2013, 35. 4. Mao no. 205, in Classic of Poetry 詩經 [Shijing]; translation adapted from Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs (New York: Grove Evergreen, 1960), 320. 5. Chen Li, Bohu tong shuzheng 陳立 白虎通疏證 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 2:47.
Ge Zhaoguang 17
(zhongguo) controlled by the king constituted the “four frontiers” (siyi) beyond which his influence could not reach. Any general discussion of tianxia will surely involve the “central states” and the “four directions” (or boundaries, sifang). In the ancient Chinese conceptual world, “inner” and “outer,” “us” and “other,” Hua (ethnic Chinese) and Yi (non-Chinese) could be very clearly distinguished. Thus, the “Royal Regulations” (Wangzhi 王制) in the Classic of Rites (Liji), an early Han text, set down the rules for a unified “all under heaven”: “The central states [zhongguo], the barbarians [rongyi] and the peoples of the five directions [wufang zhi min] all have their own particular natures, and they cannot be changed.”6 Hence, from ancient times on, no matter how the concept of tianxia changed, it always contained three fundamental distinctions, between “inside” and “outside,” Hua Chinese and non-Chinese Yi or “barbarians,” and societal “superiors” and “inferiors.” In the intellectual world of ancient China, “all under heaven” included China (the states of the Central Plain) and the four frontiers (or border peoples). The “barbarians,” non-Han tribes in the east and north of ancient China that Chinese called yidi, were regarded as a lower level of civilization that had to obey the Chinese; indeed, their political legitimacy depended upon their recognition by the central authority (namely the king, the Son of Heaven, or emperor), which conferred upon certain non-Han tribes the title of a (nonHan) tributary state (fangguo). They had to acknowledge their allegiance to the center and pay tribute. Part 1 of the “Discourses of Zhou” (“Zhouyu shang”) in the Discourses of the States (Guoyu) records Jigong Moufu as saying that if people did not serve the sovereign according to regulations, “then there will be punishments and punitive expeditions against those who do not make proper sacrifices. There will be condemnation of those who do not present tributes, and warnings for those who do not respect the king. There will also be severe punitive measures, armed forces sent against them, accompanied by written announcements intended to make them yield.”7 I want to emphasize the idea that from the point of view of historiography, any reading and interpretation of ancient terms must be situated in their concrete historical context. Ancient concepts are not all “hard facts.” Their meanings and implications frequently need to be understood within the context of contiguous clusters of ideas. Simply taking the three words “all under heaven” out of their historical context and maintaining that the phrase constitutes a type of worldview that fully embraces “equality” and “harmony” is only an ahistorical imaginary that can represent nothing more than romantic feelings and lofty ideals. Did ancient China, then, possess a concept of tianxia in which “far and near, large and small are all one” and all was compatible and harmonious? Perhaps. Some such ideas are contained in the “Ceremonial Usages” (“Liyun” 禮運) chapter in the Liji, the chapter “On Standards and Rules” (“Fayi” 法儀) in Mozi 墨子 (Master Mo), the “Teachings of the Ru” (“Ruxiao” 儒效) chapter of the Xunzi, and other literary sources. And there are those who maintain that the discussions of tianxia in these texts reflect ancient Chinese thought about the “great unity” (datong 大同). One can, of course, call it “intellectual thought,” but it would be more appropriate to call it “idealism.” At best this ideal of tianxia existed only in the “intellectual writings” of scholars; nevertheless, it did not exist in the “political reality” of Chinese history. 6. Liji zhengyi, 1:12, Shisanjing zhushu, photocopy 禮記正義 十三經注疏 (Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 1338. 7. “Zhouyu shang,” in Guoyu 周語上 國語 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), 1.1, 4.
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Imagining “All under Heaven”
At the same time, multiple interpretations of tianxia appear in both intellectual discourse and political history. Even the “Rectifying Theses” (“Zhenglun” 正論) chapter of Xunzi says that, no matter what, all the states of the Chinese Xia (zhuxia 诸夏) and the non-Chinese barbarians (yidi) had to be clearly differentiated.8 If these barbarians did not submit to China, then military force had to be used to ensure they did. As the Classic of History (Shangshu) says, “The King [Wu] put on his armor, and all under heaven was completely pacified.”9 If it were not for military strength, where would the power to pacify all under heaven come from? Even scholars who advocate Sinocentrism are forced to admit, “In reality the ancient Chinese empire [Zhongguo diguo] was actually quite far from the ideal of a Celestial empire [tianxia diguo].”10 Strangely enough, however, in spite of this they still stubbornly insist on the imagined idea by asserting that in its “cultural pursuits” the ancient Chinese empire “always attempted to carry out its affairs according to the cultural standards of a ‘Celestial Empire.’” There was no heresy then; “the nation existed for the sake of all” (tianxia weigong); the whole world was an integrated polity; the priority consideration was not territorial expansion but rather questions of permanency; the tributary system, they argue, was purely voluntary.11 Was ancient China really like that? Let us take the Han and the Tang dynasties as examples to analyze. The Han dynasty was rich and powerful during the reign of the Martial Emperor Han Wudi, (r. 141–87 BCE). He sent many punitive expeditions against the Xiongnu, attacked the kingdom of Nam Viet from five directions, simultaneously attacked the western Qiang and pacified the southwestern barbarians, and mounted a lengthy expedition that destroyed Chaoxian (Korea). Only by employing strategies of both division and isolation and also a powerful force of arms was he able to create the far-reaching tianxia of the Great Han Empire (Da Han diguo). The Tang dynasty was equally wealthy and powerful during the reign of Emperor Taizong (r. 626–49 CE). He attacked the Tujue (Turks); conquered the Tangut lands, where he established sixteen prefectures and forty-seven counties; attacked the Turkic Tuyuhun (the Xianbei or Särbi people); sent a punitive expedition against the kingdom of Goguryeo in Korea; and invaded the far-off kingdoms of Karasahr (Karashar) and Kucha (Kuche). Only in the aftermath of all these battles was the emperor called the Heavenly Khan (tian kehan). The ancient Chinese clearly expressed the primary interpretation of “all under heaven” as follows: “When we are in decline, then they flourish; when we flourish, then they decline; when they flourish, then they invade across our borders, and when they decline, then they submit to our teaching and instruction.”12 After the Han and Tang dynasties passed, people dreamed of resurrecting the Celestial Empire and Great Nation (tianchao daguo). The Song dynasty, for example, 8. Wang Xianqian, Xunzi jijie, in Zhuzi jicheng 荀子集解 諸子集成 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 12:200. Also see John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), vol. 3, §18.4, 38. 9. Although the “Wu cheng” chapter from which this passage derives is an ancient forgery, it was regarded as a classic text from the Eastern Han era on, and so its ideas still have the authority of a classic. See Shangshu zhengyi, in Shisanjing zhushu 尚書正義 十三經注疏 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 185. 10. Zhao Tingyang, “Tianxia tixi: Diguo yu shijie zhidu” 天下體系:帝國與世界制度, Shijie zhexue, 5 (2003), 20; repr. in Zhao, Meiyou shijie de shijieguan 沒有世界的世界觀 [A worldview without the world] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2005), 33. 11. Ibid. 12. Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), juan 196B, 5269.
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persisted in cherishing the old dream of “all under heaven,” even though in reality China was just one state within a multistate world. Perhaps those scholars in today’s world who advocate a Sinocentric interpretation of tianxia are perpetuating this ancient dream of Celestial Empire. It is perhaps unfortunate that, though it may remind us of the “law of the jungle,” Chinese history really was not as wonderful as the advocates of “peaceful tianxia” think. Some scholars, working only from various texts, maintain that the ancient Chinese concept of tianxia “indicated a kind of ideal of the whole world as one family.” They even go so far as to assert, “This is the reason why Chinese thought could never give rise to a concept of ‘heresy’ like that in the West, nor could it, for the same reason, give rise to a form of nationalism with such clearly and categorically defined boundaries as in Western history.” The concept of “all under heaven,” they claim, transcended “nations” (or states, countries; guojia) and “deserves to be called a harbinger of a perfect world system.”13 If we examine the history of East Asia, however, under the so-called tianxia system, when did powerful states not control the rules of the game? If weaker states did not submit to those rules, when would bloody warfare not be directed at them? Some scholars say that the ancient Chinese concept of tianxia articulated a world without borders, without distinctions between “inside” and “outside” or “us” and “them,” a world in which everyone was treated equally. Granted, proponents of this idea have given this a great deal of thought, and I am certain that their intentions are good and that we cannot say their views are the ravings of lunatics. However, in advancing this idea they definitely do not represent history. That is why I say what they present is simply a notion of utopia.
From Rising China to Land of Dreams: The Political Background of an Imagined Sinocentric Tianxia Even though discussions of tianxia had already begun in the middle of the 1990s,14 I will still take Zhao Tingyang’s 2005 book The Tianxia System (Sinocentrism): Introduction to the Philosophy of World Systems (Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲 學導論) as the starting point for my examination of this issue.15 This is not only because Zhao’s book is a rather early and comprehensive philosophical discussion of tianxia but also because it reveals many things about the political background of contemporary tianxia discourse and the origins of such thought. Three elements of Zhao’s work are worth paying close attention to. The first, his introduction, starts right off by affirming that “rethinking China” happened because 13. Zhao, “Tianxia tixi,” preface. 14. Sheng Hong’s 1996 essay, “Cong minzu zhuyi dao tianxia zhuyi” 從民族主義到天下主義, raised the issue of tianxia zhuyi; it was originally published in Zhanlüe yu guanli 1 (1996), 14–19, and later included in Sheng’s Wei wanshi kai taiping. The following year, Sheng Hong and Zhang Yuyan held a dialog on issues surrounding tianxia zhuyi. See Sheng Hong, Jiubang xinming: Liangwei dushuren mantan Zhongguo yu shijie 舊邦新命:兩位讀書人漫談中國與世界 [Old state and new missions: A scholarly exchange concerning China and the world] (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2004), 16. 15. Zhao Tingyang’s essay “Tianxia tixi: Diguo yu shijie zhidu” appeared rather early; see Shijie zhexue 5 (2003). According to the first note in this essay, it was written in 2002 and later served as the foundation for the book Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲學導論 [A system of Tianxia: Introduction into world system philosophy] (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005).
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Imagining “All under Heaven”
of “China’s economic success.” This makes it clear that tianxia as an important topic is closely related to “the rise of China” and provides the political background to the contemporary conceptualization of Sinocentrism. In the second element, before his discussion of tianxia, Zhao conspicuously cites commentary on the subject of empire by Edward Said, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri. This reveals that new Sinocentric interpretations of tianxia bear a certain relationship to the discourse of the international theoretical world on subject of empire. The third element, in Zhao’s discussions of tianxia, specifically cites Chinese discourse from pre-Qin to Ming and Qing times. This leads readers to conclude that this so-called new discourse on tianxia comes from old theories about traditional Confucianism. In fact, these ancient Chinese ideas have been given new interpretations and incorporated into contemporary discussions of world order and the discourse of the state. In what follows, I will discuss each of these elements in order. First, let us examine “the rise of China” as the political background of Sinocentrism. At first, tianxia zhuyi may have meant simply the opposite of “nationalism” (minzu zhuyi); that is, it was put forth as a synonym for “globalism” (quanqiu zhuyi).16 However, in 1996 Sheng Hong published his essay formally proposing the concept of tianxia zhuyi as Sinocentrism, although he emphasized that his proposition was “initiating a challenge to the fairness and moral legitimacy of the international order led by the West.” Although I might conclude from this that Sheng Hong does not necessarily identify himself with nationalism, it is interesting that his dissatisfaction with nationalism stems from his belief that the Chinese form “is an insufficiently pure nationalism,” even more so because “in modern times, China’s nationalism has only been a form of moral concession.”17 For this reason, he concludes, China should now move away from its concessive and defensive form of nationalism and toward a comprehensive and proactive form of Sinocentrism. What, then, caused tianxia zhuyi to transform in Chinese academic circles from “globalism” into “a form of nationalism disguised as globalism”? It was simply “the rise of China.” Starting in the 1990s, slogans like “China can say no,” “China is not happy,” and “China has stood up” began to emerge. Spurred on by a sense of national sadness or humiliation, people felt that, since the Chinese economy and national power had expanded so rapidly, to protect China’s global interests not only should China engage in trade throughout the world from a position of military strength but also it should triumph over the strong and bring peace to the masses. Even more, China should “manage many many more natural resources than the nation itself now possesses.” That is the only “road to victory for a great nation on the rise.”18
16. For example, in a 1994 article entitled “Quanqiuhua yu Zhongguo wenhua” 全球化與中國文化, Li Shenzhi wrote: “In this era of increasingly rapid globalization when China is being revitalized and becoming the equal of various nations in the world, Chinese culture should return to culturalism (wenhua zhuyi) and Sinocentrism (tianxia zhuyi)—in today’s parlance, that is globalism (quanqiu zhuyi)” (Taipingyang xuebao 2 [1994], 28). 17. For Hong Sheng’s words, see Wei wanshi kai taiping 為萬世開太平, 45, 21. 18. Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Huang Jisu, Song Qiang, and Liu Yang, et al., Zhongguo bu gaoxing 中國 不高興 [China is not happy] (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2009), 99. According to the production planner, Zhang Xiaobo, “This is an upgraded version of Zhongguo keyi shuo bu 中國可以說不 of 1996. In the previous twelve years China’s internal and external situation had changed dramatically, but one thing had not changed: China and the West were laying their cards on the table” (ibid.).
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In light of this, left-wing academics intent on criticizing American hegemony and Confucian scholars who want to revive traditional doctrines reached a consensus on one point. They asserted, “A China whose national power is increasing daily should carry on the Confucian orthodoxy [daotong 道統] and revive the Confucian world view of ‘regarding all under heaven as one family.’ This conceptual system is more appropriate for maintaining justice and peace in a world full of conflicts and mutually connected interests.” They declared that it is “China’s Heavenly Mandate [tianming]” to take responsibility for the world. They ask, “Is this one world or two? Can China and the United States jointly govern the world? China is now in the process of rising, and once it surpasses the United States, what will the world be like?” In 2008, Wang Xiaodong, “the standard-bearer of Chinese nationalism,” published a book entitled The Mandate of Heaven Settles on a Great Nation (Tianming suo gui shi daguo 天命所歸是大國) with the subtitle We Want to Be a Heroic Nation and the Leader of the World.19 A self-styled Confucian named Yao Zhongqiu also asked, Once China displaces the United States, how should we arrange the international order? His answer: internally, let Confucianism protect Chinese values; externally, employ the Chinese world order to arrange “all under heaven.” He believed that this would usher in “the Chinese moment in world history.” Such emotionally rousing language becomes even more agitated with Mo Luo, who says that, for the past century, and even longer, the West has plundered, oppressed, and plotted against China; but now the West is in crisis, and China is growing more powerful. Thus, “in the world of the future, the Chinese will politically unify all of humankind and establish a world government.”20 The political background of Sinocentrism is very clear. We have only to look at changes in China’s mainstream political ideology during the past ten years or so, as seen in slogans from “the rise of a great nation” to “the road to restoration.” These changes, which are taking place in an era of rising economic power, reflect China’s gradual abandonment of its early strategies of “concealing strengths and biding time” or “noncombativeness” and their replacement with the “Chinese dream” of being a world power. If we bring together all that the military scholars who advocate hawkish strategies have been saying about such things as the battle for hegemony, unrestricted warfare, geopolitical superiority, and the power to control the seas with the recent media blitzes continuously showing off and discussing China’s advanced weapons, we can see that this new form of Sinocentrism in the intellectual world has a very strong political background in the real world of power.
19. Wang Xiaodong, Tianming suogui shi daguo: Yao zuo yingxiong guojia he shijie lingdaozhe 天命所歸是大國:要 做英雄國家和世界領導者 (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2008). 20. See Yao Zhongqiu, “Shijie lishi jinru Zhongguo shike—Zhongguo ru ‘kan,’” Danbin de boke (blog), accessed June 30, 2014, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a78b4ee0102uw7s.html. For Mo Luo’s own words, see his Zhongguo zhanqilai 中國站起來 (Wuhan: Changjiang wenyi chubanshe, 2010), 255; see especially chap. 22, “Zhongguo wenhua bi jiang zhengjiu xifang bing” 中國文化必將拯救西方病, and chap. 24, “Zhongguo jiang tongyi shijie ma” 中國將統一世界嗎?
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Imagining “All under Heaven”
“Empire” or “Civilization-State”: How Do New Theories Echo an Imagined Sinocentrism? Next, let us examine how the new Chinese versions of tianxia, their interpretations of international dialogue about old and new “empires,” and the discourse of “China as a civilization-state” interrelate. As noted above, in the opening chapter of Tianxia System, Zhao Tingyang quotes Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire.21 This is not surprising. Since the turn of the twenty-first century in China, Said’s theory of Orientalism, his critique of cultural imperialism, and Hardt and Negri’s discourse on empire have been very influential among Chinese intellectuals. These scholars are all critics worthy of our respect, but whenever their theories are transplanted in China, strange things happen. Critiques originally aimed at mainstream Western thought and ideas sometimes give rise to emotional opposition to a commonly perceived enemy in the non-Western world, and this opposition may stir up extreme nationalist feelings against universal values and the present social order. At the turn of the century, this sort of critique of the West—especially critiques of the world order led by the United States—circulated in Chinese intellectual circles. Gradually, it separated from its original context and activated a latent form of nationalism in the hearts and minds of people in the Chinese academic world while also echoing Chinese left-wing intellectual trends. These new theories, full of a sense of justice, were originally criticisms of the West levied from within the West itself. On the political side, they fiercely criticized the political hegemony of imperialism in modern times. On the cultural side, they reflexively questioned the discursive hegemony of imperialism. They turned empire into a hotly contested concept. During this time, Chinese translations of Western-language books on empire and cultural imperialism—including Niall Ferguson’s Empire and John Tomlinson’s Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction in addition to Culture and Imperialism and Empire—appeared.22 Frankly stated, these discussions of empire constitute differently oriented theories that share a common element: they all emphasize the transcendence of empire over nation and argue that, whether dealing with old premodern or new postmodern empires, “the concept of empire is characterized fundamentally by a lack of boundaries: Empire’s rule has no limits.”23 Interestingly enough, in China this discourse on empire echoed China’s traditional concept of All under Heaven. These critiques of globalization, modernity, and the present world order, then, activated China’s emotional drive to end “a century of humiliation” and to advance its great ambition to critique the intellectual tide of modernity and rebuild a system of Sinocentrism. “Empire is materializing before our very eyes,” say Hardt and Negri, because “along with the global market and global circuits of production [there] has emerged a global order, a new logic and [a] structure of rule—in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges,
21. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 22. Niall Ferguson, Empire (Basic Books, 2003); John Tomlinson’s Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 23. Hardt and Negri, Empire, xiv.
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the sovereign power that governs the world.”24 And “if the nineteenth century was a British century, then the twentieth century has been an American century, or really, if modernity was European, then postmodernity is American.”25 In this way, Hardt and Negri aim their critique at the United States. What about the twenty-first century, then? Does China follow or challenge the United States? They do not say. It is interesting, however, that the various Chinese writings about tianxia I have read do two things: they both juxtapose tianxia to empire (for example, Zhao Tingyang writes tianxia/diguo, all under heaven/empire) and also express strong feelings about “all under heaven” (Sinocentrism) as an alternative to empire. They also suggest that the twentieth-century form of “empire” dominated by the United States and the twenty-first century system of tianxia being built by China may soon constitute a genuine historical sequence. Even though empire and “all under heaven” exist coequally without boundaries or limits, some Chinese scholarly theories posit “all under heaven” as more just, compassionate, and benevolent than empire. We need not be in a hurry to discuss why “all under heaven” is better than empire; however, we should perhaps first look at another idea that has catalyzed the imagination of tianxia: the definition of traditional China as a so-called civilization-state, a concept that originally put forth by Lucian W. Pye. Some mainland scholars are particularly enthusiastic about this idea and have attempted to support a “theory of Chinese exceptionalism” on the basis of this civilizational-state characteristic.26 This is a problem, however, as Pye did not really offer any deep historical analysis of China as a so-called civilization-state, nor did he demonstrate exactly what particular characteristics this category of state actually possessed; and, even more, he did not present any clear argument about how a civilization-state should act within the modern world order. Instead, another group of academics, relying on works by two other Western scholars, have enthusiastically promoted the “China model” along with the “theory of Chinese exceptionalism.” They have relied on Henry Kissinger, in his book On China (2011), and Martin Jacques, in his When China Rules the World (2009), to revitalize specious concepts.27 They have tried to exceptionalize Chinese history in an attempt to dress up ancient China’s tribute system as a civilized institution and to spare contemporary China from the restraints of the modern international system.28 In this way, Sinocentric empire or “all under heaven” will become both justifiable and legitimate. We know, of course, that there are many differences between modern nation-states and traditional empires. Five simple differences that exist today: (1) there are clearly demarcated borders; (2) there is a widely accepted concept of national sovereignty; (3) the concept of a people (guomin) has formed; (4) there are national (state) institutions
24. Ibid., xi. 25. Ibid., xiii. 26. Like Gan Yang, in an interview with Wu Ming in 21 Shiji Jingji Baodao, December 29, 2001; see “Gan Yang: Cong ‘minzu guojia’ zouxiang wenming guojia’” 甘陽:從“民族—國家”走向“文明—國家” [Gan Yang: from nation-state to civilizational-state], in Gan Yang, Wenming, Guojia, Daxue 文明 • 國家 • 大學 [Civilization, nation, and university] (Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2012), 1–49. 27. Henry Kissinger, On China (Allen Lane, 2011); Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (New York: Penguin, 2009). 28. For example, Zhang Weiwei, Zhongguo zhenhan: Yige “wenmingxing guojia” de jueqi 中國震撼:一個“文明 型國家”崛起 [The China shockwave: The rise of a “civilizational state”] (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 2011), chap. 3, 57–90.
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Imagining “All under Heaven”
that control politics, economics, and culture; and (5) there are the international relationships between various nation-states. What, then, is a civilization-state? Is it something that has no distinct national boundaries and no clearly defined sovereignty? Do its citizens identify only with the culture of their nation (minzu) and not with the state (guojia)? Is the Chinese nation-state governed by a traditional imperial power rather than a modern government? Are its relationships with neighboring based on countries’ state-to-state relations or a system of ritual relationships between Chinese and “barbarians”? Was ancient China a civilization-state? If it was, then how did it differ from an “oldstyle empire” (jiu diguo)? If it transcended nations and its culture embraced the four corners of the earth, then how did it differ from the kind “new empire” of today and its related forms of “neo-imperialism” and “cultural imperialism”? If “the concept of empire posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality, or really, that rules over the entire ‘civilized’ world,”29 then what constitutes “all under heaven” or tianxia? Is it not the same as an “empire” that is attempting to establish a new order? Is there, behind this “empire / all under heaven,” a power dictating what the world system should be? By what criteria can it designate itself as “civilized” and others as “barbarian?” If everyone has to submit to its cultural-political system, then will the Chinese state be compelled to revert to the distinctions between Hua (Chinese) and Yi (non-Chinese barbarians) of the old imperial order? Interestingly enough, in a discussion of the “Sinocentric system,” a French scholar once asked the following series of questions: Who will select the ruler (paterfamilias or da jiazhang) of the tianxia? How will this ruler be selected? To whom will he be responsible? How will his laws be enacted? Will his statements to the people be written in the Latin alphabet or in Chinese characters? Reportedly, “in the face of these questions, Zhao Tingyang frankly admitted that he was only demonstrating the political principles and universal system of values of ‘tianxia tixi’ from a philosophical point of view and could not without great difficulty advance any imaginative ideas about its concrete institutions of political power. He also said that he had never figured out a good way to solve the problem of the ruler (da jiazhang).” Who, indeed, is “the ruler”? Who establishes the governing rules for this tianxia? Who sets up this world order and judges its reasonableness? The answers to these questions are the keys to resolving the question of superiority between All under Heaven and empire.30 If these questions are not resolved, the term “all under heaven” will simply end up meaning “empire” again. In that event, would it make any difference whether this world system that transcends nationalities (minzu) or nation-states (guojia) was called “all under heaven” or “empire”?
29. Ferguson, Empire, xiv. 30. See Régis Debray and Zhao Tingyang, Liangmian zhi ci—guanyu geming wenti de tongxin 兩面之詞—關於革 命問題的通信 (Beijing: Zhongxin chubanshe, 2014). The passages quoted here are from Zhou Rendong’s review of this book, entitled “Guanyu geming—du Debulei he Zhao Tingyang de ‘Liangmian zhi ci,’” 關 於革命—讀德布雷和趙汀陽〈兩面之詞〉, Wenhua zongheng 10 (2014): 112.
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Overinterpretation of Traditional Confucian Sources: Early Texts, Dong Zhongshu, and He Xiu Lastly, I want to discuss how expositions on “all under heaven” in traditional Chinese Confucian texts were interpreted step-by-step into the contemporary version of Sinocentrism. Ancient Chinese discussions of all under heaven can be traced back to very early times, but here I want only to conduct a historical examination of those ideas that have been most able to stimulate the modern imagination of tianxia. I especially want to look at the origin and development of the Gongyang school of thought. When modern scholars discuss All under Heaven, they always quote the theories of the Gongyang school of Spring and Autumn Annals studies. According to the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan), because its time in history was so remote, the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu) contain records of events that “have different expressions concerning that which has been seen, heard, and passed down.”31 In other words, the record of events contained in the Spring and Autumn Annals derive from three different periods of historical memory, and so it contains “different expressions.” If things remained like that, there would certainly be nothing unusual about these ideas. However, He Xiu (129–82 CE) of the Eastern Han dynasty elaborated further on this feature and transformed these three different eras of historical memory into three eras with different political systems and moral levels. In the first age, “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside”; in the second, “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside”; and in the third and final age, “all under heaven, far and near, large and small are all one.” Interestingly, it was exactly this differently oriented interpretation that became an important discourse concerning both the real “system of Chinese-barbarian relations” (Hua yi tixi) and the ideal “order of All under Heaven” (tianxia zhixu). The phrases “the royal capital is situated inside [zhong中, which also means ‘central’] and the various Chinese states are outside” and “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside” come from the Gongyang Commentary (Gongyang zhuan).32 Dong Zhongshu (ca. 179–ca. 104 BCE) of the Western Han, in his Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu fanlu), elaborated further by asserting that ancient China’s “all under heaven” originally was close to an ideal world. Unfortunately, however, history steadily declined. Because the political system of later generations deteriorated increasingly, the royal house was powerless and could rely only on regional rulers like Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin to “resist the barbarians and save the Central States (China).”33 When Confucius came to compose the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu), he thought the best thing to do was to institute a principle that required the Son of Heaven, the regional rulers, the high officials, and the even more distant barbarians to abide by a system of hierarchical order distinguishing superiors and inferiors. It was then hoped that an effective political order could be established by relying on this structure of deferential sequences based on relative 31. Gongyangzhuan, “Yingong yuannian,” 公羊傳 隱公元年 passage 7, http://ctext.org/gongyang-zhuan/ yin-gong-yuan-nian. 32. See Chunqiu gongyangzhuan zhushu, ed. Shisanjing zhushu 春秋公羊傳注疏 十三經注疏 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), juan 18, 2200, 2297. 33. Ibid., 2297.
26
Imagining “All under Heaven”
distinctions between near and far and inside and outside in different periods of time; first, “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” and then “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside.”34 Dong Zhongshu’s method of differential treatment toward unequal groups, begun by dividing all under heaven into the “capital region” (guo), the “various Chinese states” (zhuxia), and the “barbarians” (yidi), from near to far and from inner to outer, contrasts completely with today’s unrestrained exaggeration of supposed harmony and equality in the ancient Chinese tianxia (“all under heaven, far and near, large and small are all one”). We need to remember that Dong Zhongshu lived in an age in which the Martial Emperor Han Wudi engaged in a supreme effort to open new territory on the frontiers to the emperor’s rule. Although Dong Zhongshu, on behalf of the Han dynasty, put forth the ideal that “all within the four seas are one family,” this “one family” had to be under the overall control of the Han empire. In this Han dynasty version of “all under heaven,” there was a differential order of status between barbarians and Chinese and near and far. Only in this way would the dynasty accord with the Gongyang school’s theory of “unfolding of the three stages of history” (zhang sanshi 張三世), “preserving the three sources of political legitimacy (cun santong 存三統), and “differentiating between inside and outside (yi wai-nei 異外内). However, in the Eastern Han era, He Xiu employed Dong Zhongshu’s discourse, although he imagined that tianxia, originally “not unified” (buyi 不一), could gradually change into one “as if unified” (ruoyi 若一). He borrowed the ancient Chinese ideas about a golden age of antiquity and a “history constantly moving backward,” and he used them to imagine a future rebirth of all under heaven in which there would be a sloughing off the past and all within the four seas would come together as one family. Although He Xiu’s theory was expanded in later generations, in ancient China it nevertheless was nothing more than the ideal of a classical exegete. This ideal, which even He Xiu himself said contained “extremely divergent and strange” discourse, was indeed not considered to have much importance for a very long period of time.35 As Liang Qichao put it, “From the Wei-Jin on, no one dared to talk about it . . . and the Gongyang School vanished for nearly two thousand years.”36
Imagination in the Face of Western Influence: The Misinterpretations of Kang Youwei and Contemporary Scholars Such thoughts were said to first appear again in the intellectual world when the Gongyang school of Changzhou was revitalized. Modern discussions of the Changzhou Gongyang school appeared comparatively early in Liang Qichao’s 1920 Intellectual Trends in the Qing Period (Qingdai xueshu gailun) and his posthumously published 1929 Three Hundred Years of Recent Chinese Intellectual History (Zhongguo jin sanbai nian xueshushi). Liang Qichao wrote that “the masters who initiated the New Text School” were first Zhuang Cunyu (1719–1788) and his Correcting Terms in the Spring and Autumn Annals 34. Su Yu, Chunqiu fanlu yizheng 蘇輿 春秋繁露義證 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1992), juan 4–5, 101, 133. 35. Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan zhushu春秋公羊傳注疏, preface. 36. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao lun Qingxueshi er zhong 梁啟超論清學史二種, an annotation of Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代學術概論, annot. Zhu Weizheng (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 1985), chaps. 22, 61.
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(Chunqiu zhengci) and then Liu Fenglu (1776–1829) and his Master He Xiu’s Explication of the Precedents in the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu gonyang jing He shi shili). They inspired Gong Zizhen (1792–1841) and Wei Yuan (1794– 1857) “to establish the study of the ‘practical use of Confucian principles in reordering the society’” (jingshi zhi yong) of the Shunzhi and Kangxi eras (1644–1722) based on the foundations of evidential research in the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras (1735–1820).37 One particular phenomenon is often seen in Chinese intellectual history: promoting the appearance of new ideas on the basis of “mistaken readings” of the classic texts. This has been the case especially because these “misreadings” are capable of considerable elaboration. As Qian Mu said, “The higher they are valued, the more abundantly they are debated.”38 If we return to the historical context and examine the materials concerning Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu, we will probably be able to discern several important elements of their thought. First, they were worried about the disappearance of the long history of explicating the “great meaning of the subtle words” (weiyan dayi 微言大 義) of the classics. And, second, they criticized the use of historical methods common in the Qianlong period in which they lived to explicate the meaning of classical texts. To put it simply, we can say that there were three main elements in Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu’s Gongyang school of Spring and Autumn Annals studies. First, they elucidated the idea of “the king’s tianxia” (wang tianxia), that is, the search for political uniformity throughout the country. Second, they sought the “great unity” (da yitong), that is, China’s search for a unified polity (empire) throughout its history. Third, they imagined that, after the unification of all under heaven, “the whole world would then have the same customs and the nine continents would be joined together [liuhe tongfeng, jiuzhou gongguan]”—that is, what the ancient Chinese had sought throughout history, the so-called realm in which there was “a uniform morality and identical customs.”39 If we look at these ideas in the political context of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras, how many modern implications would they have anyway? Even in Gong Zizhen and Wei Yuan, who already had premonitions of changes to come, we cannot see where the Qing dynasty’s Gongyang school exhibited much “modern” significance. One scholar has pointed out that “the significance of the Changzhou Gongyang School in intellectual history belongs to the middle Qing and not the late Qing; its face is turned toward tradition and not toward the modern era.”40 I quite agree with this assessment. To separate oneself from the intellectual context and the scholarly discourse of the period from the eighteenth to nineteenth century and to interpret Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu as seeking a new identity for China and establishing new laws for the world of the future exhibits, I’m afraid, only the excessive imagination and overinterpretation of modern people. If we look at scholarly history, we will find that there were two important historical moments when the Qing-dynasty Gongyang school was rediscovered, placed at the 37. Ibid., 61–62. “Practical use of the Confucian principles in reordering the society” is Professor Yu Yingshi’s translation. See “Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Chu-yuan Cheng, ed., Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine and the Modern World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 79–102.—Trans. 38. Qian Mu, Zhongguo jin sanbainian xueshushi 中國近三百年學術史 (Beijing: Zhonghua chongyinben, 1986), chap. 11, 524. 39. Hanshu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), juan 72, 3063. 40. “Jielun” 結論 to Cai Changlin, Cong wenshi dao jingsheng—kaojuxue fengchao xia de Changzhou xuepai 從文 士到經生—考據學潮風下的常州學派 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 2009), 511–12.
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center of recent intellectual history, and given a new interpretation. The first was in the late Qing. In the face of the raging intellectual tide from the West, Kang Youwei (1858–1927) tried to hold back the surging waves that had already crashed on the shore. Borrowing from ancient Chinese resources, he tried both “to support the old and to reform the system.” And so he continued the Gongyang school and further elaborated on “the great meaning of the subtle words” in the classics. The second was at the end of the twentieth century, when the works of a Chinese scholar of Confucianism and an American historian stimulated the Chinese academic world. The idea of taking the “theory of the three stages of human history” (sanshi shuo) as a blueprint for the design of the future world unexpectedly came into being with Kang Youwei during the late Qing. Reading his works, such as Dong Zhongshu’s Studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu Dong shi xue), A Study of Confucius as a Reformer (Kongzi gaizhi kao), The Book of Great Unity (Datong shu), and so on, we can see that Kang heavily politicized and modernized the ancient Gongyang school theories. As many scholars like Xiao Gongquan and Zhu Weizheng long ago pointed out, several late Qing scholars from Liao Ping (1852–1932) to Kang Youwei attempted to use materials from the traditional classics to respond to the challenges of Japan and the West. Liao Ping had only one foot beyond the borders of classical studies, but Kang Youwei had already jumped completely over the threshold. He employed such ideas as the “three stages of human history” (sanshi), the “three sources of political legitimacy” (santong), and “inside and outside” (neiwai) from the Gongyang Commentary and its annotations to respond to China’s internal crises and the international order. On the one hand, he admitted that these new internal crises and the new international order meant that “China” was no longer the Celestial Empire. The times had already reverted to a situation where “the royal capital is situated inside (central) and the various Chinese states are outside,” or “the various Chinese states are inside while the non-Chinese are outside.” On the other hand, he strove mightily to help China once more envelop the world with its civilization and to restore its cultural confidence on the basis of adopting the idea of “great unity of all under heaven,” where “far and near, large and small are all one” as its ideal future. Only at that time did the Gongyang Commentary and the above interpretations of the “great meaning of subtle words” in the classics start to seem as though they could provide materials for the modern world and a modern political system. Between 1885 and 1890, Kang Youwei began to write his Common Principles for the World (Renlei gongli) and Inner and Outer Chapters (Neiwai pian), using Confucius’s “principles of chaos, order and great peace to talk about the world.”41 In 1890 he met Liao Ping and began to propagate Gongyang studies. The next year he built his private academy, the Hut of Ten Thousand Trees, and began to teach what He Xiu had called “extremely divergent and strange discussions.” In General Discourse on Teaching (Jiaoxue tongyi), he first used the “three stages” (sanshi) to periodize Chinese history, and in Dong Zhongshu’s Studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals he also emphasized that the “theory of the three stages of human history” was “Confucius’ extremely important principle.”42 But only in A Study of Confucius as a Reformer did he formally assert that Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals “on the basis of the state he was born in, and thus he established the 41. Entry dated Guangxu, year 13 (1887) in Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu (Woshi) 康南海自編年譜 即《我史》 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1992), 14. 42. Kang Youwei, Chunqiu Dong shi xue 春秋董氏學, in Zhongguo xiandai xueshu jingdian—Kang Youwei juan 中 國現代學術經典 • 康有為卷), annot. Zhu Weizheng (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), 137.
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principle of the three stages of human history and paid attention to the great unity in which far and near, large and small are all one.”43 Later on, when he wrote The Book of Great Unity, he based himself more firmly on the Gongyang Commentary to imagine a world where “the four seas are as one,” and “all under heaven is one family.” The question is, Can Kang Youwei’s ideas about the “three stages of human history” and especially the “great unity” really be turned into a system for the world of the future? Someone has done a rather modern interpretation of this question and concluded that “in China’s self-transformation from empire to sovereign nation,” Kang Youwei performed the function of a “legislator” (lifazhe). Why? There are four reasons. First, Kang used the term “struggle between nations” to describe the contemporary world situation and advocated “changing China’s imperial system into a nation-state system.” Second, he reinterpreted the meaning of China, excluded the ethnic element, sought the origin of China’s identity in culture, and discovered in Chinese politics a theory of anti-nationalist (anti-ethnic) nation (state) building. Third, he combined the Confucian vision of universalism and Western knowledge politics (zhishi zhengzhi) to conceive a long-range prospect of a great unity tantamount to a great utopia. Finally, Kang combined this prospective utopia with nationalism (guojia zhuyi) and the ideology of Confucianism as a religion (Kongjiao zhuyi), and in doing so thus created a flavor of religious reformism (zongjiao gaige).44 Was Kang Youwei really such a modern legislator?45 I have always remained skeptical of this idea. In the context of the national crises of the late Qing, it is understandable that Kang Youwei would modernize Gongyang thought to construct his own imaginary world of the future. But for contemporary scholars to make him into a prophet and to use modern theories and concepts to reinterpret his ambitious but specious statements may just be simply to ignore Kang Youwei’s historical position. As an ethnic Han Chinese scholar who had lived under the rule of the Qing empire for a long time and a political leader who wanted to “protect the great Qing,” when he designed his new nation, he could not but consider his own “status or role” and be constrained by the “ethnic group and nation” that he lived in. To establish their political legitimacy, the Manchu-controlled Qing empire always emphasized three principles: (1) to make no distinctions between Chinese and nonChinese, and so “no one should be disloyal due to his Chinese or non-Chinese origin”; (2) “the morally great will definitely receive the Mandate”—that is, to decide on the basis of morality who is to govern All under Heaven; and (3) to discuss ethnicity on the basis of culture. That is to say, “when Chinese behave like barbarians, they will be treated like barbarians and when barbarians behave like Chinese, they will be treated like Chinese.” Thus, the Yongzheng emperor’s A Record of Rightness to Dispel Confusion (Dayi juemi lu) states:
43. Kang Youwei, Kongzi gaizhi kao, in Zhu Weizheng, annot., Zhongguo xiandai xueshu jingdian—Kang Youwei juan 康有為 孔子改制考 • 中國現代學術經典—康有為卷 (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), 341. 44. Wang Hui, “Diguo yu guojia,” in Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The rise of modern Chinese thought] (Beijing: Sanlian shuju, 2004), vol. 1, part 2, 821–28. 45. See Xiao Gongquan (Kung-ch’üan Hsiao), Jindai Zhongguo yu xin shijie: Kang Youwei bianfa yu datong sixiang yanjiu 近代中國與新世界:康有為變法與大同思想研究 [Modern China and the new world: A study of the reform thinking of Kang Youwei and his idea of Great Unity] (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2007), a translation of A Modern China and a New World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), trans. Wang Rongzu.
30
Imagining “All under Heaven” Since our dynasty entered and governed China, we ruled all under heaven, we integrated the Mongols and various other far off border tribes into our territory. This led to a vast expansion of China’s territory and is a great good fortune for our Chinese subjects. How can there be any distinction between Chinese and non-Chinese or inside and outside?46
If these principles of the Qing empire that contain both the idea of equality of ethnic groups and the idea that “all under heaven” is one family were to be given a modern interpretation, would this not amount to saying that the Yongzheng emperor was “designing a future for China” and “setting up laws for the modern (world)”?47 Why, then, at the end of the twentieth century, did Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu again become the fountainheads of modern thought and Kang Youwei turn into a prophet?48 Perhaps this was related to the two works mentioned above. In 1995, Jiang Qing published Introduction to the Gongyang School (Gongyangxue yinlun). Through his interpretations of the Gongyang Commentary, he moved the “great meaning of the subtle words” of the Gongyang school from a simple intellectual doctrine into the political arena. In this light, he emphasized that “Zhuang Cunyu, Liu Fenglu, Song Xiangfeng, and Kong Guangfen of the Qing dynasty Changzhou Gongyang School had led the way and Ling Shu, Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, and Chen Li had followed their lead. And so “the thousand-year-old principle again became illuminating during this time.”49 Unlike Jiang Qing, in 1990, the American scholar Benjamin A. Elman, sorting out the historical context of Qing dynasty political and intellectual change, provides a historical explanation that brings Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu back onto the center of the intellectual stage. Elman’s Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China particularly emphasizes the importance of Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu in recent Chinese intellectual history: “Zhuang Cunyu was on center stage in the political world of late imperial China. Indeed, by comparison Wei Yuan and Gong Zizhen were marginal figures whose historical importance has been determined largely by a consensus of twentieth-century scholars.”50 These two works received widespread attention. Jiang Qing’s study aimed to illustrate the political significance of the Gongyang school. He explained how the Gongyang school was “a political Confucianism that is different from the Neo-Confucian School of Mind.” It was “a practical Confucianism that offered hope in a dark age.” He emphasized that “their ideal world of great peace and great unity was the life hope that the Gongyang School offered for a chaotic age.” This “Gongyang School’s debate about 46. Dayi juemi lu, juan 1, “Shang yu,” in Dayi juemi tan 大義覺迷錄“上諭”大義覺迷談 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 1999), 135. 47. Ibid. Interestingly enough, recently a group of Chinese scholars have been clamoring for a “return to Kang Youwei.” See “Kang Youwei yu zhiduhua ruxue” 康有為與制度化儒學, Kaifang shidai (Guangzhou) 5 (2014), 16ff; Qiu Feng, “Rujia zuowei xiandai Zhongguo zhi goujianzhe” 儒家作為現代中國之構建者 [Confucianism as the constructor of modern China], Wenhua zongheng (Beijing) 2 (2014), 68–73. 48. In twentieth-century academic history, Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu did not attract much attention. Their light was always rather dim when compared to luminaries such as Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Dai Zhen, Zhang Xuecheng, and even their contemporaries Ling Tingkan and Ruan Yuan. In intellectual history, Kang Youwei also did not rank as highly as a “legislator for modern China.” Neither did he seem like a prophet of the modern or even the future world. He was rather more frequently considered a representative of modern Chinese conservative thought. 49. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun 公羊學引論 [An introduction into Gongyang school] (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), Liang Zhiping “Xu,” 2; “Zixu,” 1. 50. Benjamin A. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), xxii, with changes to romanization.
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barbarians and Chinese was based on culturalistic nationalism; it was precisely a healthy and reasonable form of nationalism” that inspired Sheng Hong to advocate Sinocentrism.51 Elman’s study was translated into Chinese in 1998 and received very positive reviews. In his afterword, he writes, “Standing for new beliefs in a time of political, social, and economic turmoil, New Text Confucians championed pragmatism and the imperative of change. . . . Beginning with Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu, New Text Confucians appealed to a reconstruction of the past to authorize the present and to prepare for the future.”52 These ideas provided some inspiration for academics like Wang Hui who trace the origins of Chinese thought back to scholars of the Qing dynasty’s Gongyang school.53 Because of the efforts of a few influential Chinese scholars who began to explore the modern significance of the Gongyang School, Gongyang intellectuals like Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu, and scattered remarks about the Gongyang Commentary gradually grew into a hot topic of interpretation. These “extremely divergent and strange discussions” were transformed into prophecies of a future world. It should be pointed out here, however, that, as much as Jiang Qing tried to promote political Confucianism as something universal, he was the first to admit that this was only his own personal belief. His aim was to bring out the “great meaning of the subtle words” of the Gongyang school, and his discussion did not have to accord completely with textual sources and history.54 And, as a historian, Benjamin Elman emphasized, “The contemporary political background to the rise of the New Text study of the classics was the He Shen affair.”55 He remained extremely cautious about the modern political significance of the Gongyang school: “Changzhou scholars had not yet reached a concept of political revolution or demonstrated a full understanding of social progress.”56 The Qing dynasty Gongyang school, then, could not necessarily have anticipated and designed in advance a world of great unity in which ethnic boundaries had been eliminated. Now we need to ask some questions about all of this. From an examination of history, can the Qing dynasty Gongyang school be interpreted as “providing theoretical premises and an intellectual vision for a new historical practice—political reform under 51. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun, chap. 1, 47, chap. 4, 231. In 2002, Sheng Hong and Jiang Qing had a long dialogue on Sinocentrism and related issues; it was published as Yi shan zhi shan 以善致善 (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2004). The preface, “Zai Ruxue zhong faxian yongjiu heping zhi dao” 在儒學中發現永 久和平之道, was published in Dushu 4 (2004) and in the revised edition of Sheng Hong, Wei wanshi kai taiping, 280–86. 52. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, 321, 322. 53. In 1993 Wang Hui and Benjamin Elman had a dialogue that was later entitled “Shei de sixiangshi?” (誰的 思想史?). In it, Elman told Wang Hui, “My situating Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu in the central position in the revival of New Text classical studies is only a form of historical reconstruction that presents a different picture from the historical picture of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao as central to that revival.” See Dushu 2 (1994). Also see “Shei de sixiangshi? Wang Hui he Aierman de xueshu duihua” 誰的思想 史?—汪暉和艾爾曼的學術對話, Qing History Institute, People’s University, http://www.iqh.net.cn/info. asp?column_id=3794. 54. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun, zixu, 2. 55. Aierman (Benjamin A. Elman), “Daixu” 代序, in “Zhongguo wenhuashi de xin fangxiang” 中國文化史的 新方向, Jingxue, zhengzhi yu zongjiao—Zhonghua diguo wanqi Changzhou jinwen xuepai yanjiu (a translation of Classicism, Politics, And Kinship), 16; “Xu lun” 序論, ibid., 6. See also Elman’s original pages (xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii, and 108–16), in which he discusses the Qing Gongyang School in reaction to He Shen and his corruption. 56. Elman, Classicism, Politics, and Kinship, 322.
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conditions of colonialism?” Can the ancient Chinese Confucian concept of “all under heaven” provide a critique of the world system led by Great Britain in the colonial era and the contemporary world order led by the United States? Can it also become an alternative program for a more reasonable and more just world order? Some people say that this alternative program comes from Dong Zhongshu and He Xiu and was refined by Zhuang Cunyu and Liu Fenglu to finally culminate in Kang Youwei’s Gongyang thought. This program “offers values and norms for a world governance that is oriented toward great unity. . . . [T]his conception of ‘great unity’ will gradually develop from the activity of reconstructing a view of the world. Its sharp critical analysis of capitalist world relations, especially of the national, boundary, class, and sexual status distinctions these world relations depend on, are full of profound foresight and insight.”57 I am afraid, however, that this is nothing more than an excessive modern interpretation.
Conclusion: An Imaginary Utopia of “All under Heaven” This chapter examined the historical metamorphosis of tianxia in Chinese history and politics. Different from contemporary Chinese fantasies with tianxia as an alternative regional order, I focused on the Sinocentric underpinning of this notion as developed in premodern Chinese history and philosophy. The idea of “the king’s tianxia” projects a normative vision of political uniformity throughout Chinese territory. The emphasis on the “great unity” is intertwined with a nationalistic imagination of empire. Moreover, this empire tends to promote a homogeneous cultural system and belief characterized by a “uniform morality and identical customs.” This vision, I fear, does not imply diversity and multiculturalism and will cultivate only chauvinism and nationalistic sentiments. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, stimulated and encouraged by theories of “new empire” from Europe and America and with the “rise of a great nation” as its political background, the Chinese intellectual arena witnessed an attempt to formulate a program to substitute a reinterpreted ancient Chinese concept of tianxia, or all under heaven, for the current world order. Several Chinese scholars now imagine that the ancient Chinese idea of all under heaven can be transformed into a form of Sinocentrism that is aimed at the contemporary world order. This tianxia, they believe, can lead the world from the age of chaos, through the age of order, and into the age of great peace following the ancient theory of the three stages of history. They say that ancient China had already designed a world system that “no longer had distinctions between large and small nations and no longer had distinctions between civilized and backward peoples; that is, it had simply eliminated national and ethnic boundaries (in all under heaven, far and near, large and small are all one).”58 For this reason, it not only established the foundation of modern and contemporary China but also set up laws for the future of the world (as in Kang Youwei, A Study of Confucius as a Reformer). If these were only academic ideas from scholarly studies, there would not be any problem, of course. But if there were attempts to make this theory of Sinocentrism the 57. Wang Hui, Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The rise of modern Chinese thought] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2004), vol. 1, part 2, 735. 58. Jiang Qing, Gongyangxue yinlun.
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basis of government, politics, and strategy, then there would be cause for concern. Distinctions between Hua (civilized Chinese) and Yi (uncivilized barbarians), between “inner” (central) and “outer” (marginal), and between “superiors” and “inferiors” were originally implicit in the ancient Chinese theory of All under Heaven. Moreover, war tactics of blood and fire could always be used to make “all under heaven return to one [tianxia guiyi].” Under the emotional appeal of “washing away a century of humiliation” and in the name of “promoting Chinese civilization,” is the theory of Sinocentrism going to be dressed up as a form of Chinese nationalism under the banner of internationalism? We can already see that the discussion of Sinocentrism has now gone beyond history and entered into contemporary reality. A number of scholars who are not historians have begun to suggest strategic road maps to the government—that is, to shift from centrism (moderation) and isolationism toward expansionism and Sinocentrism. They suggest that a “new Sinocentrism” must become “a unique Chinese diplomatic asset to replace the world system of national states.”59 I do not have the ability to make a judgment regarding this form of Sinocentrism as a political system; I have only analyzed the politics, thought, and scholarship behind this utopian imagination from viewpoint of Chinese history. At present, some Chinese scholars are extraordinarily enthusiastic about this ancient concept of all under heaven, and they are constantly asserting that it can save the future of the world. But really, can this actually be the case? *This is an abbreviated version of Professor Ge’s much longer version submitted at the conference, completed February 2, 2015.—Trans. Co-translated by Michael S. Duke and Josephine Chiu-Duke, July 5, 2015.
Bibliography Cai Changlin. Cong wenshi dao jingsheng—kaojuxue fengchao xia de Changzhou xuepai 從文士到經 生—考據學潮風下的常州學派 [From literati to exegete: Changzhou school under the wind of philology]. Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 2009. Chen Li. Bohu tong shuzheng. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994. Debray, Régis, and Zhao Tingyang. Liangmian zhi ci—guanyu geming wenti de tongxin 兩面之詞— 關於革命問題的通信. [An exchange of letters concerning the question of revolution] Beijing: Zhongxin chubanshe, 2014. Elman, Benjamin A. Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch’ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Ferguson, Niall. Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Gan Chunsong. Chonghui Wangdao—Rujia yu shijie zhixu 重回王道—儒家與世界秩序 [Returning to the way of the king: Confucianism and the world order]. Shanghai: Huadong shida chubanshe, 2012. 59. See Ye Zicheng, Zhongguo da zhanlüe: Zhongguo chengwei shijie daguo de zhuyao wenti ji zhanlüe xuanze 中國 大戰略:中國成為世界大國的主要問題及戰略選擇 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2003), 145; “Zhongguo de zhanlüe wenhua chuantong” 中國的戰略文化傳統, in Guoji zhanlüe baogao: Lilun tixi, xianshi tiaozhan yu Zhongguo de xuanze 國際戰略報告:理論體系、現實挑戰與中國的選擇, ed. Li Shaojun (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2005), chap. 10; Guo Shuyong, Zhongguo ruanshili zhanlüe 中國軟實力 戰略 (Beijing: Shishi chubanshe, 2012), chap. 6, 122; Jiang Xiyuan, “Zhongguo waijiao wenhua benyuan” 中國外交文化本源, in Daguo guanxi yu wenhua benyuan (Beijing: Zhongyuan bianyi chubanshe, 2011), chap. 5, 285.
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Gan Yang. Wenming, Guojia, Daxue 文明 • 國家 • 大學 [Civilization, nation, and university]. Beijing: Sanlian chubanshe, 2012. Guo Yi. “Tianxia zhuyi: Shijie zhixu chongjian de Rujia fang-an” 天下主義:世界秩序重建的儒家 方案 [Tianxia-ism: a Confucian proposal to rebuild the world order]. Renmin ribao, xueshu qianyan, March 2013. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Jacques, Martin. When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. New York: Penguin, 2009. Jiang Qing. Gongyangxue yinlun 公羊學引論 [An introduction into Gongyang school]. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995. Kang Youwei. Chunqiu Dong shi xue 春秋董氏學. In Zhongguo xiandai xueshu jingdian—Kang Youwei juan 中國現代學術經典 • 康有為卷, annot. Zhu Weizheng. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996. ———. Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu (Woshi) 康南海自編年譜即《我史》[A chronicle of Kang Nanhai]. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1992. ———. Kongzi gaizhi kao, in Zhu Weizheng, annot., Zhongguo xiandai xueshu jingdian—Kang Youwei juan 康有為 孔子改制考 中國現代學術經典—康有為卷 (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996. Knoblock, John. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Kissinger, Henry. On China. New York: Allen Lane, 2011. Liang Qichao. Qingdai xueshu gailun 清代學術概論, annot. Zhu Weizheng. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 1985. Li Shenzhi. “Quanqiuhua yu Zhongguo wenhua” 全球化與中國文化 [Globalization and Chinese culture]. Taipingyang xuebao 2 (1994). Li Yangfan. Yongdong de tianxia: Zhongguo shijieguan bianqian shilun 湧動的天下:中國世界觀變遷 史論 1500–1911 [Changing Tianxia: A history of Chinese worldviews, 1500–1911]. Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chubanshe, 2012. Liu, Xu. Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975. Qiu Feng, “Rujia zuowei xiandai Zhongguo zhi goujianzhe” 儒家作為現代中國之構建者 [Confucianism as the constructor of modern China]. Wenhua zongheng (Beijing) 2 (2014): 68–73. Qian Mu. Zhongguo jin sanbainian xueshushi 中國近三百年學術史. Beijing: Zhonghua chongyinben, 1986. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993. Sheng Hong. Jiubang xinming: Liangwei dushuren mantan Zhongguo yu shijie 舊邦新命:兩位讀書人 漫談中國與世界 [Old state and new missions: A scholarly exchange concerning China and the world]. Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2004. ———. Wei wanshi kai taiping 為萬世開太平. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999; rev. ed. Zhongguo fazhan chubanshe, 2010. Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Huang Jisu, Song Qiang, and Liu Yang, eds. Zhongguo bu gaoxing 中國不高興 [China is not happy]. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2009. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Waley, Arthur, trans. The Book of Songs 詩經. New York: Grove Evergreen, 1960. Wang Hui. “Diguo yu guojia.” In Xiandai Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The rise of modern Chinese thought]. Beijing: Sanlian shuju, 2004. Wang Xianqian. “Xunzi jijie.” In Zhuzi jicheng. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988. Wang Xiaodong. Tianming suogui shi daguo: Yao zuo yingxiong guojia he shijie lingdaozhe. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2008. Xiao Gongquan (Kung-ch’üan Hsiao). Jindai Zhongguo yu xin shijie: Kang Youwei bianfa yu datong sixiang yanjiu 近代中國與新世界:康有為變法與大同思想研究 [Modern China and the new world: A study of the reform thinking of Kang Youwei and his idea of Great Unity]. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2007.
Ge Zhaoguang 35 Yao Zhongqiu. Huaxia zhixu zhili shi 華夏秩序治理史 [A history of Chinese political order and governance]. Haikou: Hainan chubanshe, 2012; “Shijie lishi jinru Zhongguo shike— Zhongguo ru ‘kan.’” Danbin de boke (blog), accessed June 30, 2014, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/ blog_4a78b4ee0102uw7s.html. Ye Zicheng. Zhongguo da zhanlüe: Zhongguo chengwei shijie daguo de zhuyao wenti ji zhanlüe xuanze 中國大戰略:中國成為世界大國的主要問題及戰略選擇 [The Chinese big strategy: The major problem and strategic choices of China to become a world power]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2003. Yong, Zheng eds. Dayi juemi tan 大義覺迷錄“上諭”大義覺迷談. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 1999. Zhang Weiwei. Zhongguo zhenhan: Yige “wenmingxing guojia” de jueqi 中國震撼:一個 “文明型國 家” 崛起 [The China shockwave: The rise of a “civilizational state”]. Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 2011. Zhao Tingyang. Meiyou shijie de shijieguan 没有世界的世界觀 [A worldview without the world]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2005. ———. Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲學導論 [A system of Tianxia: Introduction into world system philosophy]. Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005. Zhao Tingyang and Régis Debray. Liangmian zhi ci—guanyu geming wenti de tongxin 兩面之詞—關 於革命問題的通信. Beijing: Zhongxin chubanshe, 2014. Zheng Xuan, Kong Yingda. Liji Zhengyi Shisanjing zhushu 禮記正義 十三經注疏. Zhonghua shuju, 1980. Zuo, Qiuming. “Zhouyu shang,” in Guoyu 周語上 國語. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988.
2
Liberalism and Utopianism in the New Culture Movement Case Studies of Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi
Peter Zarrow
Utopianism in China, at least in its modern form stressing social organization, can be traced back to the vision of a “great unity” (datong 大同) that Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) proposed around the beginning of the twentieth century. Kang originally transmitted an esoteric version of his views to trusted disciples, publishing part of what became Datong shu (大同書) only in 1913, late in his political career. The entire book was published posthumously in 1935, by which time it attracted little interest. However, it is worth noting that by the 1880s Kang had already published a rough sketch of his vision of a moral society that combined human equality with individual autonomy.1 Thus, early on, his great commonwealth concept combined with his theory of humanity’s linear progress to produce a rough recipe for utopia. Kang’s thought marked the beginning of a utopian current that fed into the irresistible tides of the 1911 Revolution. Another clearly utopian moment occurred in 1918 with the Allied victory and the Bolshevik Revolution, which produced a sense that the entire world was becoming more civilized and humane—and which made the disillusionment over the Versailles Treaty in 1919 all the more sharply felt. Yet disillusionment led to activism, not despair. Indeed, although writers of the period did not conjure up full-scale utopias, the new political movements of the 1910s and 1920s depended upon utopian ideas. To be more precise, Chinese intellectuals of all types were heavily influenced by utopian impulses, which altered either their goals or the means by which they proposed to reach those goals. This was obviously true for the quasi-millenarian visions of anarchists and communists, but it was also true for liberals, conservatives, and neo-traditionalists. The “fate” of liberalism in China has preoccupied Western (and often Chinese) historians for some time.2 Historical analysis has associated the New Culture movement 1. Kang Youwei, “Shili gongfa quanshu” 實理公法全書, Kang Youwei quanji 康有為全集 [The complete works of Kang Youwei] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987), 1: 275–306. 2. For work from the 1960s, see, for example, Benjamin I. Schwartz, Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University Press, 1972); Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). For contemporary interest, see, for example, the essays in Xu Jilin 許紀霖, ed., Gonghe, shequn yu gongmin 共和、社群與公民 [Republic, community, and citizen] (Nanjing:
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with liberalism, often as opposed to the later nationalism and radicalism of the May Fourth Movement. The New Culture movement can be dated from the founding of New Youth (新青年, originally Youth) magazine in 1915; there is really no ending date as such.3 It is too simple, therefore, to conclude that the New Culture movement promoted individualism (attacking social and cultural fetters) while the May Fourth movement of 1919 promoted nationalism and new forms of political action. For the New Culture movement also displayed nationalism and political action, while the May Fourth movement promoted individual liberty (free marriage, for example). Liberal ideals thus came to be deeply imbricated in various political movements. And if we take liberalism precisely to be an ideology—not a precise ideology since it is amorphous, multifaceted, and changing but rather an interpretation of society and a program for change based on the concept of individual liberty and responsibility—then we may come to better appreciate the radical implications of liberalism, as well as its compatibility with nationalism. The 1910s and 1920s saw many small-scale efforts to live out utopian schemes, such as organizations like the Society to Advance Morality (進德會) that formally abjured marks of power, class, and hierarchy, in addition to communal living experiments.4 These experiments had short lives but possibly more enduring influence. At any rate, the center of gravity of the notion of liberties moved from the formally political to social and cultural realms. By the 1920s, Chinese students and intellectuals sought to base political equality—a participatory republicanism that they saw the 1911 Revolution had failed to achieve—on a more thorough vision of moral equality. Their vision of the moral equality of all persons may have had some basis in Confucianism and, perhaps, Buddhism, but those doctrines had done little to provide a basis for political equality. Freed from patriarchalism and superstition, individuals could finally achieve true moral equality. The utopian longing that inspired this program is palpable. For its part, modern utopianism is not an ideology. But neither is it reducible to simple idealism. Rather, utopianism results from the conviction that a perfect or nearly perfect society, emerging out of a fundamental transformation of the corrupt status quo, is not only achievable but close to inevitable. Rather than forming an ideology, then, utopianism may help form certain ideologies, whether conservative or radical. It has in fact influenced many ideologies, including not least the Marxism of the twentieth century (notwithstanding Marxist bleatings on the subject). It also influenced Chinese liberalism. It is critical to understand that utopian thought is not limited to utopianism. In some political thinkers, the utopian impulse is an integral part of making proposals to shape the future. Utopian impulses are not limited to totalistic schemes or models of a perfect society. Nor are they necessarily associated with revolutionary transformations. Ameliorative reforms may be utopian if they are part of a larger project designed to lead to a genuinely emancipatory future, whether or not the details of this future are spelled Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2004); Fan Xing 樊星, Dalu dangdai sixiang shilun 大陸當代思想史論 [Treatises on contemporary Chinese thought] (Taibei: Xiuwei zixun keji chuban, 2012); and Yuan Juzheng 苑舉正 et al., Yin Haiguang yu ziyou zhuyi 殷海光與自由主義 [Yin Haiguang and liberalism] (Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chubanshe, 2013). 3. Though see Fabio Lanza, “Of Chronology, Failure, and Fidelity: When Did the May Fourth Movement End?,” Twentieth-Century China 38, no. 1 (January 2013): 53–70. 4. Anna Gustafsson Chen, “Dreams of the Future: Communal Experiments in May Fourth China” (PhD diss., Lund University, 1998).
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out. If “utopianism” refers to large-scale utopian visions, whether literary or sociopolitical, the utopian impulse refers to brief glances that reflect but do not explore such visions. Related to the utopian impulse, in my view, is what Jay Winter calls “minor utopias” or “imaginings of liberation usually on a smaller scale.”5 Minor utopias do not aim to remake everything but are relatively focused on a particular problem: national unity, peace, human rights, and the like. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 and Hu Shi 胡適 did not create major utopias, and it is misleading to label them utopian thinkers as such. But their political thought was infused with the spirit of the minor utopia. Chen’s faith in democracy as a means of entirely reordering the social and political spheres of life and Hu’s faith in science as the means to perfect society demonstrate that their liberalism was based on a utopian impulse. New Culture liberalism, therefore, sought to manage the tensions between liberty and equality, the individual and society, and change and structure, and it sought a means to create the very order in which such tensions could be managed. For Chen, the route to a democratic society—referring to an entire way of life, not merely political institutions—lay in practicing democracy, even in the face of warlordism and imperialism. Hu believed much the same thing and also that, through becoming educated in the scientific worldview, Chinese people would become productive and participating citizens. This chapter does not offer an in-depth analysis of the thought of Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi but rather suggests a way of reading their writing from the New Culture era through the 1920s. Reading through the lens of utopianism allows us to understand both the radicalism inherent to Chinese liberalism and something of how liberalism can be constructed under illiberal conditions.
The Liberal Utopianism of Chen Duxiu Chen Duxiu linked liberation and democracy in a way that can be called utopian. His political vision of democratization for China in the 1910s continued to inform his commitment to revolution in the 1920s and beyond, though of course he learned to value the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” His liberal vision of the 1910s was utopian not because it was totalistic but because it attempted to reconcile the tensions between individual and state, as well as the particular and the universal. It was also utopian because, while not totalistic itself, it was based on total rejection of Chinese traditional culture and even what Chen sometimes called national character. Chen’s totalistic rejection of traditional culture stemmed from a despair that rhetorically targeted not imperialism or capitalism but China’s incapacity to resist imperialist pressures.6 Although scholars have correctly noted Chen’s criticisms of nationalism, there is no doubt of his fundamental support for rebuilding China specifically, for the rights
5. Jay Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 4–6. Major utopias are marked by great detail, by massive scale, and often by their distance in future (or in their earlier Renaissance form, by their supposed distance in space). Major utopias always, and minor utopias to a considerable extent, are based on a particular historical view that gives confidence in the future. In this view, by reading history properly, we can determine its direction and speed up its course. We know the future by the past. 6. On totalism in this sense, see Yü-sheng Lin, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979).
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of national self-determination in general, and for all forms of anti-imperialism.7 In the course of universal human progress, the nation, for Chen, remained an essential unit or locus of efforts at improvement. Below, I discuss Chen’s writings from the late 1910s, not his later turn to Marxism; it is worth noting, however, that late in life Chen sought to combine an anti-Stalinist Marxism with liberal-democratic institutions and that, as we will see, he was always skeptical of what was to become called bourgeois capitalism.8 Democracy represented, for Chen, the abolition of boundaries—a key trope of Chinese utopianism. Chen believed that practicing democracy erased the boundaries between ruler and ruled, men and women, and rich and poor. In other words, democracy and equality were two sides of the same coin. Furthermore, Chen saw this coin as the product of liberation, meaning both the freedom of the individual-as-individual and the group of all-individuals. If nowhere else, Chen’s utopianism lay in this tendency to reconcile all good: individual-group, liberty-equality, and order-democracy. In 1915 Chen defined progress simply as the development of civilization. His teleological approach paid no attention to byways, detours, or dead ends. Civilization, then, was a universal process operating across the globe, though at different rates in different places. While Chen did not specifically define it in this way, what he meant by civilization was political: how humans organized themselves into communities.9 Thus developed the first stage of civilization, found in all ancient societies: a relative peace encouraged by religions, enforced by laws and institutions, and fostered by a theocratic ideology. The social system in this stage of civilization was hierarchical and stagnant: everyone knew their place and seldom challenged it. Truly modern civilization, Chen said, was developed only in the West, though it was now spreading to the rest of the world. What was modern civilization? For Chen, it essentially consisted of three elements: the practice of rights, the concept of evolution, and the upsurge of socialism. The modern social system was based on democracy, which meant all persons were equal before the law. Chen acknowledged that inequalities remained in the West in regard to wealth; and, as long as the system of private property remained in place, capitalist oppression would continue. He thus posited the need to complete the “political revolution” with a “social revolution.”10 The principles of the French Revolution—liberty, equality, and fraternity—Chen reinscribed as natural desires, underlying the drive toward “civilization” or progress. Chen’s tone highlights the utopian thrust of his vision. Chen’s famous “Warning to Youth” essay of 1915 suggested that something like utopia was to be found partly in
7. Sooyoung Kim, “Individualism and Nationalism in the Thought of Chen Duxiu, 1904–1919,” in Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner, ed. Catherine Lynch et al. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011). 8. See Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, Chen Duxiu wannian zhuzuoxuan 陳獨秀晚年著作選 [Selections of Chen Duxiu’s late works], ed. Lin Zhiliang 林致良, Wu Mengming 吳孟明, and Zhou Lüqiang 周履鏘 (Hong Kong: Tiandi, 2012); and Chen Duxiu, Chen Duxiu’s Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942, ed. and trans. Gregor Benton (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998). 9. Chen Duxiu, “Falanxiren yu jinshi wenming” 法蘭西人與近世文明, in Chen Duxiu wencun 陳獨秀文存 [The works of Chen Duxiu] (Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1927), 1: 11–12, hereafter CDXWC. Chen’s particular interest in French contributions to modern civilization, a major point of the essay, need not concern us here. 10. That is, that the French Revolution of 1789 would be “completed” in a sense by the institutionalization of socialism, whether through government action or through further violent revolution. Chen was not much concerned with the specific issue of revolution at this point. Ibid., 13–14.
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the future but partly in the present as well. Not “here” but in an “over there” that was a fictional projection of Chen’s imagination. It is said that modern European history is “the history of liberation”: the destruction of monarchy represented political liberation; the rejection of religious authority represented religious liberation; the rise of socialist thought represented economic liberation; and political rights for women represented liberation from male authority. “Liberation” means gaining freedom from the yoke of slaves in order to achieve the human character based on autonomy and freedom. We have hands and feet and so can plan how to feed and warm ourselves; we have mouths and tongues and so can make our preferences clear; we have the capacity for thought and so can exalt what we believe in; and we absolutely do not allow other people to represent us and equally should not make ourselves masters by enslaving others. On the basis of recognizing our character as independent and autonomous, all our actions, rights, and beliefs are based on our own knowledge and ability, and absolutely cannot be based on blindly following others.11
Of course, this was a political program disguised as historical analysis. As Chen makes clear elsewhere, he regarded political liberation even in Europe as woefully incomplete, because it left capitalist oppression and exploitation in place. What is striking about this passage, aside from its heroic tone, is the faith that liberation can be based on the natural attributes of individuals. Writing in opposition to Yuan Shikai’s monarchical movement, Chen linked it to Confucianism and found Confucianism much more culpable than Yuan. Chen’s bitter attacks reveal his loathing for what he saw as the support that Confucian morality and cosmology inevitably gave monarchism due to their preachment of natural hierarchies, or antiegalitarianism.12 Chen’s anti-Confucianism is well known, but we should also note that his attacks on Confucianism were twinned with a utopian vision of democracy. (Chen tended to think in binary opposites like East-West, Confucianismdemocracy, old-new, and so forth.) He feared the Chinese people were trapped in a Confucian swamp of delusion.13 But he simultaneously believed they had the capacity to free themselves. What society would look like once freed was for Chen essentially a congeries of small participatory democracies. The direct participation of all individuals in public life was the core of Chen’s utopian vision. Chen believed that the modern nation was in some basic sense democratic by definition—autocracies could be not modern states. Nor could they be effective ones. Thus both a general law of civilizational progress and the iron workings of social Darwinism demanded that China take a democratic turn. Chen noted, “The state refers to that which is formed by the people assembling together, unifying within and resisting from without to protect the benefits of the whole people, and resisting rule as private
11. Chen Duxiu, “Jinggao qingnian” 敬告青年, CDXWC 1:3. 12. See inter alia “Wuren zuihou zhi juewu” 吾人最後之覺悟, CDXWC 1:55–56; and “Xianfa yu Kongjiao” 憲 法與孔教 (1916), CDXWC 1:103–12; “Fubi yu zun-Kong” 復辟與尊孔 (1917), CDXWC 1: 16168; and “Zai zhiwen Dongfang zazhi jizhe” 再質問東方雜誌記者, CDXWC 2:315–42. 13. That is, that in spite of the 1911 Revolution, they had not absorbed the principles of republicanism. Even after the defeat of Yuan’s monarchism—precisely because of the failure of the republican revolutionaries to achieve power in the wake of Yuan’s defeat—Chen’s tone in 1917 became apocalyptic. See “Jiu sixiang yu guoti wenti” 舊思想與國體問題, CDXWC 1:147–51; and “Jindai Xiyang jiaoyu” 近代西洋教育, CDXWC 1:153–59.
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possession.”14 Autocracies were “false states” that sacrificed the good of the people for the sake of an individual monarch. This kind of prose merely echoed the writings of Liang Qichao 梁啟超 from the previous decade. But Chen went further when he demanded that the Chinese people take direct charge of their own affairs. It was through political participation that they would achieve their own liberation or, as Chen put it in 1916, “enlightenment.”15 This notion stemmed directly from Chen’s analysis of the failure of the Republic. Whether “constitutional political order” and “citizen politics” can be practiced depends entirely on one basic condition: that a majority of the people are able to consciously understand their active agency as masters in regard to politics. Active agency as masters stems from the people themselves establishing a government, themselves establishing laws and obeying them, and themselves determining rights and respecting them. If agency in a constitutional order lies in the government and not the people, then not only is the constitution merely empty words that can never be enforced, but also the people will not take its guarantees of liberty seriously and will not protect it with their lives. In this way the spirit of constitutional order is completely lost. Thus if the constitutional order does not arise from the self-consciousness of the majority of the people and through their own actions, but rather they only hope for good government or the governance of wise men, then their depravity and ugliness is the same as when slaves look for a little kindness from their master or when the vulgar masses look for the virtuous governance of sagely kings and wise ministers.16
Chen continued to sketch out these ideas in several essays published in 1918 and 1919. By this time, the Republic had descended further into warlordism, but the defeat of German militarism and the success of the Bolshevik revolution cheered Chinese progressives. At this time, Chen wanted to defend the realm of “politics” as a site of legitimate work—that is, of discussion and action.17 In delineating what should be rejected and outlining what should be adopted, his utopian impulses were on full display. First, the rejection of the politics of military force. With a degree of accuracy, Chen noted that the failures of Yuan Shikai and Zhang Xun proved that military force alone could not form a modern state, but with wild optimism he seems to have concluded that military force would play no role in state formation. He noted that if the Republic had failed, so had autocracy and monarchism. Chen called on warlords to abjure their militarism and follow the law. How or why they would do so, Chen did not say. But his second point was that no one faction could unite the country in any case. Showing himself to be a student of politics in the usual sense after all, Chen pointed out that China’s politico-military factions could not even unite themselves. Their efforts to unify China were having the effect of dividing it instead, and—here Chen was echoing an old trope—inviting the foreigners to interfere. But again all Chen could advise was that the factions learn how to share power. Chen’s third point about politics amounted to an expression of his utopian democratic views. It was phrased, however, as a challenge. The Chinese themselves had to decide between conservatism and reform. If they chose conservatism, then they could follow the old Chinese ways and not waste money in sending students abroad, 14. 15. 16. 17.
Chen Duxiu, “Jinri zhi jiaoyu fangzhen” 今日之教育方針, CDXWC 1:23. Chen Duxiu, “Wuren zuihou zhi juewu,” CDXWC 1:49–56. Ibid., 54. Chen Duxiu, “Jinri Zhongguo zhi zhengzhi wenti” 今日中國之政治問題, CDXWC 1:221–25.
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building schools, and studying Western learning. But if they wanted reform, then they should entirely adopt new Western methods and not worry about “national essence” or “national sentiment” and other nonsense. Chen strongly suggested that constitutionalism was scientific. The clearest expression of Chen’s utopian view of participatory democracy came in his Dewey-inspired essay of 1919, “The Basis of Democratic Practice.” Even though—or because—Chen did not regard democracy as the ultimate goal, this is the arena his utopianism received its biggest play.18 The ultimate goal was the improvement of “social life,” a project not timeless in the sense that a static perfection would be reached but timeless in the sense it was a never-ending project. Thus, Chen stated, progress in politics, economics, and morality are tools in the never-ending improvement of social life. Chen did not define the notion of social life, and so the outlines of his utopianism remained murky, but he clearly had something like the happiness of people in mind. Yet while claiming that the “social question” was now paramount, Chen devoted most of this essay to the political question.19 For democratic politics and democratic economics were indivisible for Chen, who cited Dewey’s thought as an example of the evolution of the concept of democracy in the West from the purely political sphere to other spheres. Here, Chen cited four aspects of democracy as preached by Dewey. First, the political: a constitution to define powers and representative institutions to express the will of the people. Second, rights: in particular freedoms of speech, publication, belief, and residence. Third, the social: egalitarianism, seen in the destruction of hierarchical classes and antiegalitarian thought and in the recognition of the dignity of all. And, fourth, the economic: the eradication of the distinctions between rich and poor. Having followed Dewey thus far, Chen granted the usefulness of the distinction in terms of action between the socioeconomic sphere and the political sphere. The fundamental economic problem had to be solved first, he said. Whether this was an unconscious reflection of Confucius’s words on the subject or a reflection of his new Marxist reading, Chen did not here follow his own advice. Rather, he noted that all fair-minded persons should agree with Dewey’s socioeconomic perspective on democracy, which Chen claimed was essentially socialist; and he further noted that Chinese were preoccupied with political questions, which he found understandable given the failures of the Republic. Chen then proceeded to write as if indeed getting political forms right would lead to solving the economic problem. In my reading, this was not so much a contradiction in Chen’s thought—moving target though it was at the time—as it reflected Chen’s utopian faith that the proper practice of democracy and the solutions to economic problems were two sides of the same coin. Chen could offer only partial support for constitutionalism and representative institutions. He feared that reliance on “constitutional limits of powers” and “representative institutions to express the people’s will” leaves some liberty rights (ziyouquan 18. Chen Duxiu, “Shixing minzhi de jichu” 實行民治的基礎, CDXWC 2:373–89. Chen’s thinking here was clearly provoked by John Dewey’s talks in China, which deepened Chen’s own thinking on democracy; in other words, he was not merely citing Dewey as an authority to support views he already held. See Jessica Ching-Sze Wang, John Dewey in China: To Teach and to Learn (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). 19. Commenting on the Chinese neglect of “the social question” (economic problems), Chen noted that their attention to political questions was to be expected because of the failure of the Republic to keep its promises. “Shixing minzhi de jichu,” CDXWC 2:376.
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自由權) in the hands of the few. True democracy, according to Chen, means that the constitution is directly determined by the people, and that they use the constitution to establish limits on powers while republican institutions are used to carry out people’s will in accord with the constitution: “in other words, destroying the distinction between ruler and ruled as the people themselves are simultaneously both rulers and ruled.”20 Engaging in a perilous balancing act, Chen emphasized that he was not opposed to constitutionalism—parliaments, cabinets, good government, infrastructure, provincial and county self-government—but that all of these political forms needed to be built on the foundation of true democracy in order to develop properly.21 Democracy (minzhi 民 治)—“direct and real self-governance and associations of the people”—had to be built from the bottom up. The alternative was bureaucratic rule (guanzhi 官治), which might be competent but could never be democratic. Chen’s faith in the possibility and even practicability of this vision was rooted in his analysis of Chinese and world conditions. Conditions could scarcely be worse. In Chen’s analysis, in spite of the revolution, China was at heart still an imperial bureaucratic state. It was flailing around since the revolution, and the revolutionaries themselves had not thought through how to build a new state. Above all, neither the militarists nor the politicians (including the KMT) understood the nature of democracy. They believed in the power of government instead. Chen linked their delusions not only to their hunger for power but to the very problem of good political leadership cited above. In a word, Chen implied that even the best constitutions cannot create democracy, but that only democratic practices might create constitutionalism. However, Chen also listed several reasons for optimism. First, China was still at the beginning of the road to republicanism and had only started to deal with its problems. Second, China’s local self-governing traditions could provide a basis for democratization. Here, Chen was echoing arguments made by anarchists and ignoring for the moment all the ways in which local organizations were hierarchical and patriarchal. What he emphasized was their independence from the central government, which traditionally left local communities largely alone. While communities had to pay their taxes and roughly obey the law, they were able to establish village and clan temple organizations, charitable institutions (like orphanages, nursing homes, clinics, and firefighting), schools, professional associations and guilds, and so forth. And, third, precisely because China had failed to build up industry and commerce, it lacked capitalist and militarist classes like those of the Europe. Furthermore, China’s cultural tradition had produced egalitarian ideals such as Xu Xing’s notion of aristocrats and peasants “farming together” and Confucius’s demand that no one be poor, as well as recurring discussions of land redistribution.22 “For all these reasons I believe that in the future political democracy and socio-economic democracy will develop greatly in China.”23 The notion that China could develop socialism because it lacked big capitalists had become something of a shared premise of political discourse since the turn of the 20. Ibid., 375–76. 21. Ibid., 378. 22. Chen’s citations were a little forced. In fact, the egalitarianism of Xu Xing 許行 was thoroughly refuted in the Mencius (3A4; “滕文公上”); and, deliberately or not, Chen was distorting Confucius (Analects, 16:1:10), where the phrase in modern Chinese “all without poverty” (jun wupin 均無貧) refers to maintenance of a hierarchical social order. But no matter. 23. Chen Duxiu, “Shixing minzhi de jichu,” CDXWC 2:376–77.
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century. That Chen would adopt this view was a sign of his intellectual desperation in the face of worsening political conditions. Looking at Europe, Chen cited “occupational associations” (tongye lianhe 同業聯合) as the key to the development of democracy. Chen explained that “occupational associations” referred neither to guilds in the traditional sense nor to modern trade unions, but rather were locally based organizations that included both bosses and workers, though not big capitalists. Chen’s example was that of shop workers where the shop owner himself engaged in the same basic tasks as his employees. Such associations were the basis of grassroots local self-government. Whether Chen’s notion of local organizations had anything to do with European history, it reflected his sense of the potential sources of change in contemporary China as well as some knowledge of syndicalism.24 Like so many writers of all political persuasions, Chen turned to the organic metaphor of the state: a life form composed of neither a single massive structure nor of scattered sand, but rather countless cells unified into a functioning whole. Whereas typical proponents of the organic state envisioned a commanding head and more or less servile limbs, Chen envisioned a state whose foundation lay in purely voluntary cooperation among the cells of self-governing groups. “What is this foundation? It is the people’s direct and real self-governing and associating” (renmin zhijie de shiji de zizhi yu lianhe 人民直接的實際的自治與聯合). Chen argued that all persons were to become involved in public questions directly, and not through representatives. Chen’s reasoning may have been that representation allows for the co-optation of powers by either central forces or local power-holders. He insisted that democracy would be built not by people following rules set by some self-proclaimed government but by procedures established by local self-government, properly understood, and by occupational associations. The facts on the ground will create the laws, which flow from social reality and never create that reality. Given the disorder of conditions in China today, it was more imperative than ever for Chinese to take control of their own circumstances. But how? Chen’s utopian-inflected answer was that that people act on their own. For example, Chen urged that people cut off all ties to the three pests of militarists, officials, and politicians. Chen had, of course, been saying as much since the beginning of the New Culture movement. Now, at the height of the May Fourth movement, he saw hope in persons who acted out of the demands of their consciences, awakened the people, and led a unified march toward democracy. That is, as long as the grassroots organizations on which all depended could continue to shun the “three pests.” However, Chen’s true utopianism can be seen in the other parts of his scheme.25 First, he urged that associations be kept small. “Self-government” (zizhi 自治) should begin with villages and township; in cities, with neighborhoods; in unions, with particular sets of workers. Writing in the wake of the May Fourth movement with its plethora of organizations, Chen was able to give many examples of groups that had become too large to function democratically. Second—this point followed from the first and in my view lies at the heart of Chen’s utopianism—decision-making powers (yijuequan 議決權) must be in the hands of all members. All adult men and women are to meet and directly participate. This would avoid, in Chen’s view, the problems of minority rule and corruption. And it would nourish the organizational abilities of the 24. Ibid., 379–82. 25. Ibid., 382–87.
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people, encourage thinking about the public good, and foster involvement in public affairs. Citing Dewey approvingly, Chen claimed that one point of democracy was to educate people: so they have to be involved; and, involved, they learn how to support the political sphere. Chen particularly emphasized the importance of involving women, who, more than men, he said, are harmonious, careful, and empathetic. The third point Chen stressed also reveals a kind of utopian mind-set that wishes to work out the details of a system that has yet to be put into place. The heads of the various associations were to be elected by all the members, regardless of education, property, or gender, and were to serve limited terms. In fact, Chen wanted all meetings to be chaired only provisionally. And, fourth, each group should focus on its members’ needs. Thus, local self-government organizations would attend to education (schools, reading rooms), elections, roads, public hygiene, and in rural areas grain storage, irrigation, and pests. And occupational associations would attend to education (night schools, reading rooms, popular lectures), credit unions, public hygiene, insurance (illness, old age, unemployment, and the like), consumer unions, employment contacts, leisure, and so forth. Again, writing at the height of the May Fourth movement, Chen supported its anti-imperialism but wanted organizations to maintain focus on immediate, local issues. Once associations grew large enough to require representation rather than direct participation, they become vulnerable to outside takeovers. Perhaps Chen had in mind the compromise-inclined Shanghai Chamber of Commerce. At any rate, Chen believed that small-scale associations could meet real political and economic needs of the Republic. Indeed, he argued as an aside, their very smallness protected them from the baleful attentions of politicians and officials: they did not threaten social revolution. Chen’s utopian impulses thus flowered in his vision of democratic participation, his belief that healthy human associations could take form inside the larger corpse of a dead society, and his faith that their processes would lead to “making habits” that would eventually ensure that political and economic organizations of a larger scale would not fall under the domination of minorities. All this, evidently without violence. Chen shared the general consensus that China could avoid class struggle and the worst evils of capitalism. But he also foresaw the elimination not only of the current divisions between rich and poor, but also of national divisions and of sexual divisions. Chen’s vision of small, free, and democratic associations as the keystone of political order brought him close to an anarchist position. However, as noted above, Chen did not reject the nation-state in principle. The closest he came was perhaps in 1918 when he equated the state with other “idols” of superstitious worship. Ignorant people allow themselves to be cheated by gods and monarchs, and Chen was happy to see that the Chinese and Russian revolutions had destroyed their monarchs.26 States, too, cheat people, he said. Domestically, they protect aristocrats and the wealthy from internal disorder, while externally they invade smaller countries. Chen cited the European war to argue that states were useless in preserving the peace; he also thought people had the right to defend themselves. When in the early 1920s he began attacking anarchism explicitly, Chen admitted that all past and present states were exploitative but argued that the state nonetheless could be used to eliminate exploitation.27 That is, under 26. Chen Duxiu, “Ouxiang pohuai lun” 偶像破壞論, CDXWC 1:227–30. 27. Chen Duxiu, “Tan zhengzhi” 談政治, CDXWC 3:541–56; and “Shandong wenti yu guomin juewu” 山東問 題與國民覺悟, CDXWC 3:643–47.
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working-class control, it would become a source of “new power” used for good instead of evil. Indeed, Chen argued, the state was the only source of power strong enough to abolish the system of private property and wage labor. This was utopianism of a different stripe.
The Utopian Liberalism of Hu Shi Hu Shi staked out a utopian view of the future in the 1920s. This is not to say that he was a committed utopian thinker. Hu’s moderation, antiradicalism, and elitism prevented him from consistently promoting any rigorous egalitarianism. Though a strong believer in progress, Hu also understood that, precisely because progress was unending, any attempt to describe a perfect world would be describing only a passing moment.28 Hu’s 1917 essay “Problems and Isms” (“Wenti yu zhuyi” 問題與主義) amounted to an attack on utopianism. His 1919 essay “Pragmatism” (or “Experimentalism,” “Shiyan zhuyi” 實 驗主義) emphasized science’s uncertainty principle: the experimental method more or less guaranteed progress, but there could be no epistemological certainty. Nonetheless, Hu’s views gestured toward utopianism: faith that humanity could master nature, that morality could be based on science, and that some kind of democratic socialism would prevail. This might be called a kind of processual utopianism, precisely because Hu thought progress was unending. Above all, Hu believed in a cosmopolitan modernity based on science. Other goods, such as democracy and spiritual development, flowed from this. Hu repeatedly claimed that spiritual life depended on material civilization, but he was little interested in the spiritual life itself. Rather, he promised people the capacity to develop their own spiritual lives if they wished. Modern science had liberated humanity from the oppression of Nature, Hu said, and gave people the capacity to develop better forms of social organization: whether democracy was inevitable, Hu left a little ambiguous. The revival of Confucianism and talk of “Eastern spirituality” that had arisen by the early 1920s made Hu bilious. By way of contrast, he insisted that Western civilization had produced not only material wealth but also an understanding of spiritual life superior to any that Chinese had ever attained. It is as if Hu had seen utopia—in the West (the United States particularly)—and it worked.29 In Hu’s historical vision, the traditional West was much like the contemporary East. With the breakthrough of the scientific method, however, the West was able to create a modern world that the East should emulate. For Hu, the key distinction was not in the end East-West: this was 28. Hao Chang considers Hu a utopian and indeed Promethean thinker, but if this is so, utopianism still constituted only a part of Hu’s political thought, which was equally marked by the skepticism inherent in his commitment to pragmatism. Zhang Hao 張灝, “Zhuanxing shidai Zhongguo wutuobang zhuyi de xingqi” 轉型時代中國烏托邦主義的興起 [The rise of Chinese utopianism in the time of transition], Xinshixue 14, no. 2 (June 2003), 16–20. 29. Some of this was rhetorical overkill, as Hu himself was aware. Audience mattered; he was trying to break through what he saw as Chinese complacency and considerably less worried about Western racism. Hu Shi noted his own tendency to emphasize America’s strong points and ignore its weaknesses and problems. See Hu Shi, “Meiguo de furen: Zai Beijing nüzi shifan xuexiao yanjiang” 美國的婦人:在北京女 子師範學校演講, in Hu Shi quanji 胡適全集 [The complete works of Hu Shi], ed. Ji Xianlin 季羡林 (hereafter HSQJ; Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 1:618–32. In this 1918 lecture Hu insisted that he despised Westerners looking down on the Chinese and that when he was in United States he emphasized good points of Chinese culture.
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because civilizational values were mutable. Rather, what mattered was the distinction between tradition and modernity or, in other words, between religious superstition and science.30 All civilizations are both material and spiritual. By material, Hu meant control over natural forces; by spiritual, he meant the intelligence, sentiments, and ideals of a people.31 In this way, Hu implied that the source of civilization was spiritual: human intelligence invented material ways to deal with the environment. But, equally, it is a degree of material sufficiency that allows spiritual development. We deeply believe that spiritual civilization is necessarily built on material foundations. In raising the material enjoyment of humans and in increasing the material convenience and ease of humans, we are headed in the direction of liberating the capabilities of humans and allowing human spirit and intelligence not to be entirely devoted to mere survival but allow it to satisfy their spiritual needs.32
For Hu, then, the West was not materialist in the crass sense of the word but idealistic and even spiritual because of its strong material foundations.33 Hu praised the Western (utilitarian) view that the goal of life is happiness and therefore that poverty and illness were evils. The result, he said, was an emphasis on production and commerce that provided people with medicines, sanitation, transportation, art, and an orderly society. An example Hu cited in other essays was that of the rickshaw puller versus the automobile. How can a civilization that uses people as beasts of burden be considered more spiritual than the one that uses machines?34 Here Hu launched into a rhapsody to the automobile: cars were efficient, letting farmers get their eggs and milk to market; cars provided mind-body training, keeping limbs and senses nimble; cars symbolized equality, as carpenters and professors both drove; and cars make possible leisure. What it all came down to, Hu concluded elsewhere, was machines. While every American has twenty-five or thirty “machine-slaves,” the Chinese have just one or even less.35 “Our workers are menial laborers; their workers are masters of machine-slaves.” We should note that Hu never attributed any kind of essential superiority to the West but rather assumed that the East (China) had somehow simply fallen behind. In other words, there was a single path to modern civilization. Hu claimed that in ancient times people sought emotional comfort through ghost and spirits, heavens and hells.36 Religion promised individual salvation and social morality. However, religion had failed to improve the quality of life. Here, Hu did not claim that it was the intention of modern civilization to improve moral standards and even create a new religion, but that was its effect. How did this happen? The European explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth century may have been pirates and thieves, but the merchants who followed them opened up new lands, broadened the human imagination, and created new wealth. The Industrial Revolution that followed created new forces of production.
30. In his essay “Our Attitudes toward Modern Western Civilization” of 1926, Hu demolished the argument that the West was materialist while the East spiritual. Hu Shi, “Women duiyu xiyang jindai wenming de taidu” 我們對於西洋近代文明的態度, HSQJ 3:1–14. 31. Ibid., 2. 32. Ibid., 3. 33. Ibid., 4–5. 34. Hu Shi, “Manyou de ganxiang” 漫遊的感想, HSQJ 3:37–38. 35. Hu Shi, “Qing dajia lai zhaozhao jingzi 請大家來照照鏡子,” HSQJ, 3:26–27. 36. Hu Shi, “Women duiyu xiyang jindai wenming de taidu,” 7–9.
48
Liberalism and Utopianism in the New Culture Movement In the course of two to three centuries, material enjoyment gradually increased and humanity’s empathy gradually enlarged. This enlarged empathy became the basis of a new religion and morality. As the individual sought liberty, the individual also considered the liberty of others, so not only did liberty mean not transgressing the liberty of others, but also progressed to the point of seeking liberty for the greatest number of people. The benefits enjoyed by the self became the benefits to be enjoyed by [all] people, and so the philosophers of utilitarianism advocated the standard of the “greatest happiness for the greatest number” for human society.37
The notion of universal empathy shows that Hu’s utopian impulses went beyond the merely technological. Moreover, Hu linked sociopolitical systems to material progress as well. He claimed that the “religious creed” of the eighteenth century had already evolved into that of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” and, after the mid-nineteenth century, socialism. Like Chen Duxiu and many other Chinese intellectuals, Hu said that the move toward socialism in the nineteenth century had come about as a reaction to the evils of individualism and the cruelties of capitalism. “Men of vision realized that the capitalist system of free competition could not achieve the goals of true ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity.’”38 The rise of the labor movement led to further reforms: factory inspections, hygiene, protections for child and women workers, minimum wages, regulation of working hours and bonuses, workers’ insurance, unemployment insurance, progressive taxes, and so forth. “This is the new religion and morality of socialization [shehuihua 社會化].”39 Thus, Hu took a different tack from Chen in speaking of the West’s “spiritual civilization,” which, if hardly perfect, nonetheless represented real progress in bringing ordinary people into political participation, emancipating women, and establishing equality and liberties under the law. It was not faith in science alone that gave Hu’s thought a utopian thrust. It was that he further sought to turn science into a new religion. At the very least, Hu said that religious ideas had to be in accord with rational judgment and evidence. Today we do not fantasize about heavens and paradises, but we should think about creating a “kingdom of joy” on earth. We do not fantasize about eternal life but we should build strong and vigorous people on earth. . . . We may not lightly believe in the omnipotence of the Lord, but we believe that the scientific method is omnipotent, and that the future of humanity is limitless. We may not believe that the soul is indestructible, but we believe that human dignity [renge 人格] is sacred and that human rights are sacred.40
In holding the West up to China as a model to be followed spiritually as well as materially, Hu inevitably turned the West into the future that worked. “The first characteristic of the spirit of modern Western civilization is science, and the basic spirit of science is the search for truth.”41 It is truth that sets us free: free of thoughtless habits, superstitions, and prejudices; free of the fetters of the environment and the fear of natural forces. Free “to become fully human in a dignified manner.” Hu claimed that the West 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.
Ibid., 9–10. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 8–9. Ibid., 5. By way of contrast, according to Hu, the “old civilization of the East” not only failed to pursue knowledge but generally suppressed it. A search for enlightenment through meditation merely represented a commitment to ignorance. The dichotomizing Hu indulged in here, with its self-Orientalizing rhetoric, was not typical of his thought as a whole, though he consistently despised Buddhism.
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had not only succeeded in creating mastery over nature, but met the needs of emotion and imagination through its literature and art. And, furthermore, the West was at least well along the road to establish a new religio-morality. If the West had not abandoned all traditional views, it was abandoning those views that rested on superstition. The scientific search for “human happiness” led inevitably to superior ways of finding spiritual happiness. “To completely use the intelligence and wisdom of humans in this way, seeking truth to liberate human intelligence, to control Nature to benefit humanity, to remake the material environment, to reform the social and political systems, to plan for the greatest happiness for the greatest number—this kind of civilization should be able to satisfy the spiritual needs of humanity; this kind of civilization is spiritual civilization, a truly idealistic civilization, and not a materialistic civilization.”42 In fact, Hu implied, the only reason why people could not create a “human paradise” was that the search for knowledge and improvement was endless—but the search itself was pleasurable. In a certain sense, then, Hu was saying that utopia was impossible to create but the search for utopia was itself a kind of utopia: a processual utopia. Hu’s utopian impulse is thus seen in his belief that through science a world of material abundance leads to a virtually perfect society—that is, ongoing processes of “socialization” and “humanization.” But the utopian impulse is also seen in the steadfastness of his faith in gradual promotion of democratic institutions. He did not deny the problems of functioning democracies such as corruption and power mongering. Nonetheless, Hu believed not only that progress toward democracy was historically inevitable (or at least probable), but also that democracy served as a kind of single-root solution to China’s problems. Here is the heart of the utopianism of Hu’s democratic thought, devoid of radicalism as it was. “Do democratic political systems have the effect of producing good citizens?”43 Hu first argued that institutional reforms produced better forms of political life. “We cannot make people good but institutional reform can make people fear to lightly do evil.”44 In other words, a legal system, and Hu specifically referred to laws on voting. Hu then argued that the experience of democratic nations showed that such institutions trained better citizens. Now, how do democratic institutions come about? Here, Hu pointed out that they might evolve in a single society, like Britain, or they may be adopted by other societies. The point was, however, that in all cases democracy is a kind of reaction to corruption and created the good citizens we see today; it was not created by those good citizens, for they did not initially exist. Speaking to China’s conditions, Hu urged that the country not wait until “the level of the people is sufficiently high” to adopt democratic institutions: in that case, the institutions would never come. Rather, since other countries now offer models for China to follow, the institutions can be adopted and will then function to educate citizens. As Chinese have learned how use electricity and how to form corporations, so the political realm, while more complicated, is at root 42. Ibid., 13–14. The English version states, “That civilization which makes the fullest possible use of human ingenuity and intelligence in search of truth in order to control nature and transform matter for the service of mankind, to liberate the human spirit from ignorance, superstition, and slavery to the forces of nature, and to reform social and political institution for the benefit of the greatest number—such a civilization is highly idealistic and spiritual. This civilization will continue to grow and improve itself.” Charles A. Beard, “The Civilizations of the East and the West,” in Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization (New York: Longmans, Green, 1928), 41. 43. Hu Shi, “Zhengzhi gailun xu”《政治概論》序, HSQJ 2:415–20. 44. Ibid., 416–17.
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simply another form of organizational life. Again, Hu turned to America for a more or less utopian example: “In all those countries that have undergone long training in democratic institutions, civic knowledge and morality is higher than in other countries.” The citizens of democratic countries “were simply born under republican institutions, grew up in the air of democracy, received training of institutions, and so naturally the knowledge acquired by many citizens of democratic countries is higher than that of people who learn about politics from books in university.”45 But what did this have to do with China? Hu’s ideas here were not very specific and perhaps could not be. He adopted education in democracy as a kind of metaphor for institutional change. Education required practice, Hu said, and practice required commitment. Students who skipped classes would of course fail to learn. What this meant for China was left to readers to decide. But Hu was firm on one point: “Civic knowledge is an element of civic morality; and the spread of civic knowledge is a key condition for the cultivation of civic morality.” In other words, knowledge would empower citizens to act as a check on governmental abuses and bring about further progress. If this all seems rather vague, it was certainly hopeful. The failure of democratic institutions to take root since the 1911 Revolution, for Hu, was no sign of their weakness. Rather, he implied that the fault lay with the Chinese—Hu seemed to disperse equal blame among political and military leaders, social and intellectual elites, and the ignorant masses. A pessimist might conclude that there were no institutions in place to begin the process of educating citizens who would then strengthen those institutions and no people able to found the new institutions to educate the citizens of the future. In this light, Hu’s faith that breakthrough was possible almost seems utopian in itself. In a sense, Hu maintained the faith that Chen Duxiu had proclaimed in local, face-to-face democracy. Hu’s faith remained pure: In the race to be first, although there can only be one man in first place and other people lag behind, although they cannot be first, they can still gradually progress and ultimately get to the goal. In today’s interconnected world, the environment and programs that had originally spurred on the Europeans now spur us on. We cannot doubt the future of science and democracy in China and India. Their backwardness is merely due to their lack of those environments and problems that force and spur on [change], and not because of basic differences in their intuitions or sensations of life.46
Hu opposed the Guomindang’s revolutionism as much as that of the Communists. Neither imperialism nor even warlords were China’s fiercest enemies: rather, these were “poverty, disease, ignorance, corruption, and disorder.”47 He feared revolution would lead only to more despotism. A kind of “revolution” can overthrow China’s real enemies through dedicated effort, but not a violent revolution. The kind of revolution that Hu supported was “to make complete use of the scientific knowledge and methods of the world, and step by step to carry out a conscious set of reforms, and under conscious leadership bit by bit to harvest the results of unceasing reforms.”48 Even in his caution and gradualism, the utopian impulse permeated Hu’s thinking.
45. Ibid., 418. 46. Hu Shi, “Du Liang Shuming xiansheng de Dong Xi wenhua jiqi zhexue” 讀梁漱溟先生的《東西文化及其哲 學》, HSQJ 1:254 (my italics). 47. Hu Shi, “Women zou natiao lu” 我們走那條路, HSQJ 4:455–70. 48. Ibid., 468 (my italics).
Peter Zarrow 51
Conclusion Utopianism is often attacked as destructive. The twentieth century seems to be marked by the relationship between a sick utopianism and the likes of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.49 Defenders of utopianism note that it provides a salutary critique of the status quo. It is also hard to imagine historical progress without at least some people holding up a utopian vision of what progress can attain. As well, utopias denaturalize what might otherwise be taken for granted, and, at times of crisis, utopianism provides both emotional escape and a more or less practical guide to action. China during the late Qing and early Republic is often described in terms of crisis and collapse. Utopianism was a critical part of the process through which a new China was reforged. Specifically, the utopian impulse played a key role in the formation of a variety of political ideologies. In the case of Chinese liberalism, it was not the mere faith in liberalism, in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles, that marked its utopianism. Rather, it was the use of a utopian vision as one of its building blocks. Chen Duxiu saw in democratic practices the means of ultimately abolishing the boundaries that separated people from one another. He thought that democracy would liberate subjugated individuals from authoritarianism and subjugated classes from exploitation. This view of democracy relied not on representation but participation. Chen’s liberalism of the New Culture era—his moderate skepticism of nationalism, his trust in the individual, his view of a demarcated public realm—was inseparable from the utopian impulse that informed it. Hu Shi’s faith in democracy was equally strong, but the deus ex machina of his liberalism lay in scientific progress. Through the mastery of nature—already achieved or at least being achieved in the West—humanity could build a new and much needed spiritual life, one based on socialization. For Hu Shi, material progress was the necessary first step in building a humane society; but, conversely, it was humanity’s spiritual potential that made material progress possible in the first place. Neither Chen nor Hu described what a utopia would look like. That is because they both believed that utopia lay in the processes of democratic life and scientifictechnological progress. There was, therefore, no utopia as such; nonetheless, they could not have spun their liberal visions of society without the thread of utopianism.
Bibliography Beard, Charles A. “The Civilizations of the East and the West.” In Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization. New York: Longmans, Green, 1928. Chen, Anna Gustafsson. “Dreams of the Future: Communal Experiments in May Fourth China.” PhD diss., Lund University, 1998. Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀. Chen Duxiu wannian zhuzuoxuan 陳獨秀晚年著作選 [Selections of Chen Duxiu’s late works]. Edited by Lin Zhiliang 林致良, Wu Mengming 吳孟明, and Zhou Lüqiang 周履 鏘. Hong Kong: Tiandi, 2012. ———. Chen Duxiu’s Last Articles and Letters, 1937–1942. Edited and translated by Gregor Benton. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998. ———. Chen Duxiu wencun 陳獨秀文存 [The works of Chen Duxiu]. Shanghai: Yadong tushuguan, 1927. Fan Xing 樊星, Dalu dangdai sixiang shilun 大陸當代思想史論 [Treatises on contemporary Chinese thought]. Taibei: Xiuwei zixun keji chuban, 2012. 49. Cf. Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom, 1.
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Grieder, Jerome B. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917– 1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. Hu Shi 胡適. Hu Shi quanji 胡適全集 [The complete works of Hu Shi]. Edited by Ji Xianlin 季羡林. Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003. Kang Youwei 康有為. “Shili gongfa quanshu” 實理公法全書 [Treatises on universal principles and laws], Kang Youwei quanji 康有為全集 [The complete works of Kang Youwei]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1987. Kim, Sooyoung. “Individualism and Nationalism in the Thought of Chen Duxiu, 1904–1919.” In Radicalism, Revolution, and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner, edited by Catherine Lynch et al. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011. Lanza, Fabio. “Of Chronology, Failure, and Fidelity: When Did the May Fourth Movement End?” Twentieth-Century China 38, no. 1 (January 2013): 53–70. Lin, Yü-sheng. The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979. Schwartz, Benjamin I. Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium. Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University Press, 1972. Wang, Jessica Ching-Sze. John Dewey in China: To Teach and to Learn. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. Winter, Jay. Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Xu Jilin 許紀霖, ed. Gonghe, shequn yu gongmin 共和、社群與公民 [Republic, community, and citizen]. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2004. Yuan Juzheng 苑舉正 et al. Yin Haiguang yu ziyou zhuyi 殷海光與自由主義 [Yin Haiguang and liberalism]. Taibei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chubanshe, 2013. Zhang Hao 張灝. “Zhuanxing shidai Zhongguo wutuobang zhuyi de xingqi” 轉型時代中國烏托 邦主義的興起 [The rise of Chinese utopianism in the time of transition]. Xinshixue 14, no. 2, (June 2003): 16–20.
3
The Panglossian Dream and Dark Consciousness Modern Chinese Literature and Utopia
David Der-wei Wang
Modern Chinese literature was born with a call for utopia. In 1902, Liang Qichchao (梁啟超, 1873–1929) published Xinzhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記 (The future of new China) in the newly founded fiction magazine Xin xiaoshuo 新小説 (New fiction). The novel opens with an overview of a prosperous China in 2062, sixty years after the novel’s fictive publication date of 2002. As citizens of the Republic of Great China (Da Zhonghua minzhuguo 大中華民主國) celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her founding, a revered scholar, Kong Hongdao 孔宏道, the seventy-second-generation descendant of Confucius, is invited to give a lecture at the Shanghai World Exposition on the way Chinese democracy has been implemented. His lecture draws a huge, enthusiastic audience, including hundreds and thousands from overseas. If the grand opening of The Future of New China feels uncanny, perhaps it is because Liang’s futuristic vision seems to have become reality in the new millennium. At a time when China is ascending to a role as a leading political and economic power worldwide, having hosted not only a World Exposition but also the Olympics and, more impressively, founded hundreds of Confucius Institutes in places as far from China as Pakistan and Rwanda, Liang Qichao’s utopia may prove to have already been realized by socialist China. Indeed, as if taking up where Liang left off more than a century earlier, President Xi Jinping gave a speech on the “Chinese Dream” in 2013, in which he projected the future of new China as one thriving on “the way of socialism,” “the spirit of nationalism,” and “the force of ethnic solidarity.”1 Although “utopia” has always been a suspect term in the lexicon of socialist China,2 the Chinese Dream partakes of a strong utopian dimension insofar as it invokes an ideal 1. For more interpretations of the Chinese Dream, see http://baike.baidu.com/subview/1817221/9342599. htm. 2. See Maurice Meisner’s classic Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). Chinese Communist discourse deems utopianism an illusory search for dream without historical grounding. Communist revolution, by contrast, represents a project that is to be realized in accordance with a preordained timetable. Western Marxists from Ernst Bloch to Fredric Jameson tend to ascribe a positive value to utopia and treat revolution as a project leading toward the utopian goal. Nevertheless, whereas Bloch famously expands the utopian impulse to a perennial search for a desired way of living, demanding the power to imagine the “not yet,” Jameson seeks a “cognitive mapping”
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political and cultural vision. As a matter of fact, the Chinese Dream may represent the summation of a string of recent discourses about futuristic China. From daguojueqi 大國 崛起 (the great nation is rising) to tianxia 天下 (under the heaven), from “repoliticizing” China to tongsantong 通三統 (unification of three orthodoxies—Confucianism, Maoism, Dengism), we are witnessing a cornucopia of treatises and declarations that again aspire to forge a powerful Chinese polity through their visions. While these treatises are ordinarily not treated in literary terms, they nevertheless point to the rhetorical gesture and imaginary aptitude that inform the “structure of feeling” of a time. They share the fantastic mode of a “grand narrative,” and it is this mode that brings us to rethink utopia and its literary manifestation in contemporary China. Ironically enough, when turning to contemporary Chinese fiction per se, one finds few works that can be described as utopian in its traditional definition. Whereas Ge Fei’s 格非 (b. 1964) Wutuobang sanbuqu 烏托邦三部曲 (Trilogy of utopia, 2007–2011) deals with China amid the ruins caused by preceding utopian projects, Han Song’s 韓松 (b. 1965) 2066: Xixing manji 2066 西行漫記 (2066: Red star over America, 2000) pictures a postapocalyptic scene of China and the world; whereas Chan Koon-chung’s (b. 1952) 陳冠中 Shengshi 盛世 (The fat years, 2009) imagines a China immersed in the jubilant mood of amnesia, Ma Jian’s (b. 1952) Rouzhitu 肉之土 (Beijing coma, 2010) envisions a China as monstrous and mystical as the world of Shanhai jing 山海經 (Classic of mountains and seas). Dystopia and heterotopia permeate contemporary Chinese narrative literature. This fact leads one to look into the spectrum of utopian imaginary of our time and ask whether the utopian discourse as proffered by the political machine and select intellectuals, and the dystopian fiction that prevails in the literary sphere, represent the dialogical potential in Chinese reality or, more polemically, its disavowal. This chapter analyzes the contested conditions of modern and contemporary Chinese utopia as a political treatise, a literary genre, and a social imaginary.3 The first part takes a historical perspective from which to describe the rise of utopia in the late Qing era and ponders the contradictions and confluences of its narrative and intellectual paradigms. The second part introduces the two key concepts of this essay, “Panglossianism” and “dark consciousness.” By Panglossianism, I refer to the Voltairean critique of the optimism that seeks to justify the history of both the past and future in terms of “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”4 By dark of utopia as a way of flouting the limits of the capitalist status quo. See, for example, Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia, trans. Anthony Nassar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); for an introduction to Bloch’s utopian theory, see Douglas Kellner, “Ernst Bloch, Utopia, and Ideology Critique,” http:// pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/ernstblochutopiaideologycritique.pdf. Fredric Jameson, in Archaeology of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2007), laments the eclipse of the utopian vision in the leftist revolutionary vein in the contemporary world. Granting his insightful critique of the negative utopian impulses and consequences as represented by global capitalism, he appears to fall short in critically examining the utopian ruins created by leftist revolutionary undertakings. Nor could he engage with the anomalous coexistence of both socialist and capitalist utopian projects, as is the case of contemporary China, and its dystopian consequences. 3. For a classic survey of utopia, see, Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times (London: Basil Blackwell, 1987). For a recent discussion of utopia as a revived imaginary in relation to the concept of globalization, see Robert Tally Jr., Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World-System (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). 4. In the 1759 novel Candide by Voltaire, Dr. Pangloss is described as a caricature of optimism believing “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds” despite the evidence that indicates otherwise. Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin invoked the term “Panglossian Paradigm” to critique the evolutionary biologists who view all traits as atomized things that had been naturally selected and thus leave no
David Der-wei Wang 55
consciousness, I refer to Professor Chang Hao’s 張灝 engagement with youan yishi 幽 暗意識, an idea that deals with the polemics of crisis and contingency ingrained in Chinese thought. Neither, to be sure, should be reduced to a simple ideological stance.5 The third part of this chapter turns to the scene of the new millennium, observing the dystopian and heterotopian inclinations in fictional practice as opposed to the utopian aspiration in political discourse.
The Republic of Great China versus the Civilized World Utopia was introduced as a neologism, wutuobang 烏託邦, by Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921) in his translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, Tianyan lun 天演論.6 In his annotation, Yan Fu contemplates the relationship between rulership and national governance, and concludes that education and enlightenment are keys to the prosperity of a nation. In his treatment, Yan Fu downplays the fact that utopia is a fictitious construct, the valence of which lies in its imaginary projection of that which is unavailable in reality. Rather, he considers utopia a goal to be achieved by any nation committed to the dictum of the survival of the fittest. In other words, he equates utopia to a teleological project predicated on the Darwinian ethics he yearned for.7 The way Yan Fu broached utopia leads to a larger question regarding the instrumentality of literature at his time. That is, the “fictitiousness” of literature is regarded as intelligible only when it proves to be a manifestation of historical experience or expectation.8 As such, fiction is said to serve as both the end and the means of transforming China. Echoing Yan Fu’s and like-minded intellectuals’ advocacy for reforming China by re-forming Chinese fiction, Liang Qichao made the famous statement in 1902: “To renovate the nation, one has to first renovate fiction. . . . Fiction has the incalculable
5. 6.
7. 8.
theoretical space to other causes. See “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings in the Royal Society of London Biological Science 205 (1161): 581–98. I derive my understanding of Gould’s theory from “The Pattern of Life’s History,” in John Brockman, ed., The Third Culture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 52–64. Zhang Hao (Hao Chang), “Youan yishi yuminzhu chuantong” 幽暗意識與民主傳統 [Dark consciousness and the democratic tradition], in Zhang Hao zixuanji 張灝自選集 [Work of Zhao Hao; author’s edition] (Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 1–24. Yan Fu 嚴復, trans. Tianyan lun 天演論 [Evolution and ethics by Thomas Huxley] (Taiwan: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2009), 33. See also James Paradis and George Williams, ed. T. H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). Federico Masini, a pioneer of the study of loan words of the late Qing, suggests that Japanese tend to use “理想鄉” or the phonic translation “ユートピア” for utopia (The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution toward a National Language [Berkeley: Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 1997], 138). The high tide of this translation is much later than the Meiji period when intellectuals associated the idea with the socialist movement. I thank Professor Uganda Kwan’s assistance in identifying the source. For a recent genealogical study of the introduction of utopia to China, see Yan Jianfu 顔健富, Cong shenti dao shijie: Wanqing xiaoshuo de xingainian ditu 從身體 到世界:晚清小説的新概念地圖 [From the body to the world: The new conceptual mapping of late Qing fiction] (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2014), chap. 4. For a general discussion of the teleological moral agenda embedded in Yan Fu’s rendition of evolution and ethics, see Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yan Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), chap. 4. Such an understanding of literature, of course, has its relevance to the classical understanding of the mutual implication between literature (wen) and the Way (dao). Wenxue, or literature, is as much a form of representation as it is a vehicle through which the way of the world is manifested.
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power of transforming Chinese mind.”9 At some mysterious point of time, as Liang would have it, fiction and nation or, for our concern, utopia and history, become exchangeable notions. The extant narrative of The Future of New China relates, via flashback, the interaction between Huang Keqiang 黃克強 and Li Qubing 李去病, the two protagonists of the novel. Provoked by the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, both Huang and Li decide to go to England in pursuit of new thought, and they end up studying at Oxford University. When news about the aborted Hundred Days Reform reaches them, the two friends are faced with another crucial decision. Whereas Li considers the immediate and radical action of revolution, Huang cautions his friend against the consequences of futile violence and sacrifice. The two then part ways; Huang travels to Berlin to learn the latest theories in Staatswissenschaft, and Li heads for Paris to witness the outcome of the French Revolution. The two are reunited on their way home, and yet they still cannot solve their disagreement over how to renew China. The Future of New China comes to a sudden stop in chapter 5. One has to acknowledge that many late Qing novels were aborted, a fact that epitomizes the volatile circumstances of reading and writing fiction in the late Qing era.10 What makes The Future of New China special is that its unfinished form complicates its utopian scheme. Insofar as it promises to tell how the bright future will have been reached over a span of fifty years, the unfinished project of The Future of New China exposes a short circuit in its narrative and historiographical mechanism. If “future” serves as the motivation/destination of Liang’s fiction as revolution, its realization indicates that a passage of time, along with the plot, will unfold and its implied hermeneutic goal will be revealed. As the novel stands now, China in the future has been reached in advance (through a flashback), followed nevertheless by an abortion of the history and narrative that would have filled the gap between now and then. I have described elsewhere the narrative short circuit of Liang Qichao’s novel in terms of the “future perfect” mood, which means a projection of a scene or episode expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future. In other words, the novel deals not with what may happen but what will have happened in the years to come.11 I argue that Liang projects the grand prospect of the Republic of Great China with such fervor that he preempts the future and overfamiliarizes the unknown. When the remote future turns out to be preemptively familiar, or when the mystical apocalypse proves to be yesterday’s news, Liang risks turning his futurist visions into “nostalgic” anticipation. His novel indicates not so much a discovery of a new temporal horizon as a wishful revival of the ancient dreams of China; his visit to the future follows a secret itinerary through the fantasies of the past. After The Future of New China, quite a few works of late Qing fiction feature utopian visions. By all standards, Wu Jianren’s 吳趼人 (1865–1910) Xin Shitouji 新石頭記 (The new story of the stone, 1908) stands out as the most fascinating. As its title suggests, 9. Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Lun Xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhiguanxi” 論小説與群治之關係 [On the relationship between fiction and ruling the people], in Yinbingshi wenji dianjiao 飲冰室文集點校 [Ice drinker studio collection of writings, annotated edition], vol. 2 (Kunming: Yunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 758–60. 10. Many things forced Liang to abandon the writing of the novel, including his changing political agenda. Ibid. 11. David Der-wei Wang, Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 301–9.
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the novel is intended as a sequel to Cao Xueqin’s 曹雪芹 (1715–1763) magnum opus Shitou ji 石頭記 (The story of the stone; better known as Honglou meng, The dream of the red chamber, 1792). The New Story of the Stone is divided evenly into two parts. In the first part, Baoyu, or the Stone, returns to mundane society after centuries of life as an otherworldly recluse. His travel takes him to a yeman shijie 野蠻世界 (barbarous world), where he attempts to disseminate new thought, only to find himself hunted down as a heretic by the court. The second part begins with Baoyu barely escaping from jail and stumbling, by coincidence, into a mysterious country, the wenming jingjie 文明世 界 (civilized world), a nation that is strong in military power, political structure, scientific advancement, educational institutions, and moral cultivation. While Baoyu is most impressed by its scientific and technological developments, his journey culminates in his visit to its venerable ruler, Dongfang Qiang 東方強 (literally, “Eastern strength”). Through Dongfang Qiang’s description of the political system of the Civilized World, Wu Jianren lays out his own blueprint for utopia. With ren 仁 (benevolence) in mind, according to Dongfang Qiang, not only is a ruler able to improve the welfare of his own people; he will also extend compassion to people of other countries suffering from tyranny. Fantastic episodes aside, Wu Jianren’s civilized world possesses an ambitious conceptual framework, and to that effect it reminds us of Liang Qichao’s Republic of Great China. Set side by side, they bring to the fore two of the most important visions of late Qing utopia. Both project a prosperous and powerful China that surpasses its Western counterparts in the material sense and enact a dialectic between Chinese modernity and a Confucian morality encapsulated in the concept of benevolence. However, Liang Qichao’s and Wu Jianren’s utopian plans differ from each other when it comes to their chronotopical schemes and narratological methods. Liang Qichao launched New Fiction and engaged in creating The Future of New China as a result of his deliberation on the conditions of revolution. Until 1902, Liang had been a fervent lobbyist for a destructive action to overhaul China. But in The Future of New China he clearly leans toward Huang Keqiang’s agenda, favoring a more moderate form of revolution toward a constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected parliament. Since the novel remains unfinished, we will never find out how Huang and Li put their agendas into practice. However, thanks to the opening of the narrative in 2062, we do know that Huang eventually succeeded in his undertaking and became the second president of the Republic of Great China. Liang Qichao’s vision of utopia is the consummation of a single, linear (but not necessarily evolutionary or revolutionary) development of time. This linear model, which has been so popular with Confucians and classicist Europeans, deprives a novelist like Liang of the freedom to imagine and justify various futures and revolutions. Moreover, as discussed above, although The Future of New China assumes the temporal structure of linear progression, it unfolds in the “future perfect” mood. As such, the “future” in Liang’s novel appears as the magical moment that stands at the other end of history, in the absence of progressive momentum that leads towards the happening of the moment. As the completion of the prescribed timetable, the future is not a dynamic through which historical forces clash and crystallize into an unprecedented constellation but a mythical moment that transcends time. Wu Jianren’s The New Story of Stone presents a more complex temporal and narrative scheme with regard to the feasibility of utopia. After the model of Cao Xueqin’s
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Story of the Stone, Wu Jianren situates his narrative in the imbricated layers of time, as a mythological cycle, a dream sequence, a realistic experience, and a historical account. Moreover, he presents the barbarous world and the civilized world back to back, as if they were in parallel time zones, each in its own turn generating more complications. As such he plays out the theme of doubling and simulacrum inherent in Cao’s original. Between the miserable past and the fantastic future, a fold in time has occurred, and it is in that parallel time that the most exhilarating thing for China has taken place. Time has been conceived such that it alienates both history and the individual’s search for plenitude in the course of history; the temporal duration through which China’s transformation takes place remains mysteriously bracketed. Baoyu the Stone, it will be recalled, once missed the primal present when heaven was first mended by the goddess Nüwa; his earthly romance could be no more than a reinstatement of a debt of tears inherited from that time. And now he “will have been” denied a third chance to mend heaven. Traveling between the past and the future, Wu Jianren’s Jia Baoyu remains the unhappy Stone, a lonely, puzzled adventurer through the tunnel of time, ever pondering the capricious terms of accessing utopia. Accordingly, for Liang Qichao as for Wu Jianren, narrative fiction and political treatise function in a reciprocal manner, bringing out the paradox inherent in the utopian discourse that utopia is both a “good place” (eutopia), an ideal polity well worthy of human pursuit, and a “no place” (outopia), a fictitious locus available only in human fantasy. Whereas Liang Qichao projects the futuristic China as the teleological end in the progressive flux of time, Wu Jianren depicts the civilized world as a mysterious state existing simultaneously with the barbarous world. Whereas Liang Qichao launches his search for the perfect future order with the narrative device of a “future perfect” tense, Wu situates his ideal kingdom in the “fold” of multiple time zones. I argue that the two narrative strategies are indicative of the bifurcated developments of modern Chinese utopia and that the entangled relationship between them may well serve as an index to the debate over “the future of new China” in our time.
The Best of All Possible Worlds Since the turn of the new millennium there have been waves of discourses discussing the future of new China. While the origins of the debates can be traced to the 1990s or even earlier, one discerns in the latest voices a change of tone and rhetoric. If the fin-de-siècle intellectuals engaged themselves with various malaises of China and their remedies, thus reflecting the symptoms of what C. T. Hsia has called an “obsession with China,” their counterparts in the new century have taken a far more optimistic perspective on China. Amid the calls of “a great nation is rising,” a euphoric sentiment has permeated the intellectual scene, as evinced by a series of discourses attempting to envision—if not rationalize—“the future of new China.” I describe these discourses as grand talks, or dashuo 大說, as opposed to narrative fiction or xiaoshuo. These dashuo are aimed at sublime subjects—from nationalism to sovereignty, from frontier disputes to economic issues—and public contention.12 While 12. For a general description of the rise of intellectual discourses on Chinese politics and society, see Ma Licheng 馬立誠, Dangdai Zhongguo bazhong shehui sichao 當代中國八種社會思潮 [Eight social thoughts in contemporary China] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2012). Also see Ge Zhaoguang 葛兆光,
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these grand talks earn more intellectual and political currency than fictional narratives because of their claims to theoretical rigor and historical relevance, what has been obscured is the fact that their rhetorical strategy and visionary bearing are no less suggestive of imaginary constructs. They constitute the latest edition of a literature of persuasion. Take a quick look at a few examples. Whereas Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽 rediscovers the concept of tianxia 天下 (under the heaven), proclaiming that China should reinstate the powerful mandate as the encompassing state of “under the heaven,”13 Yan Xuetong 閻學通 and Xu Jin 徐進 seek to favorably reevaluate the thought of wangba 王 霸 (the kingly and the hegemonic way).14 Whereas Gan Yang 甘陽 promotes tongsantong 通三統 (unification of three orthodoxies), trying to find the coherent lineage of the orthodoxies of Confucianism, Maoism, and Dengism,15 Jiang Qing 蔣慶 argues for the renaissance of Confucian learning as the only way to rectify a polity beset by Western concepts.16 Most influentially, Wang Hui 汪暉 celebrates Chinese modernity as a form of anti-(Western) modernity, and proposes a new world order formed after the old tributary system (chaogong tixi 朝貢體系), a system that can be traced all the way back to the Zhou dynasty.17 Despite their divergent ideological backgrounds, these discourses share the same eagerness to seek from traditional Chinese intellectual resources a new system of thought to set against the extant Western paradigm. Their arguments bespeak newly gained confidence in China’s postsocialist modernity, “oriented toward salvaging and recovering positive aspects of the Chinese intellectual tradition against what [they] regard as the indiscriminate destruction from the tradition from the May Fourth onward.”18 As Jiang Qing’s book title, Gongyangxue yinlun 公羊學引論 (An introduction to Gongyang learning, 1995), hints, these scholars echo in one way or another the exegetical discourse of Gongyang school, attempting to reach the esoteric significance of history and politics through an “esoteric” interpretation of canonical texts (weiyan dayi 微言大義). Precisely because of such a metaphorical approach, these authors impel one to rethink the literary underpinnings of their writings. What is striking is the uncanny parallel between these postsocialist discourses and late Qing political fiction and utopian treatises, as evinced particularly by works such as Liang Qichao’s The Future of New China and Kang Youwei’s The Book of the Great Community. As discussed above, both Kang and Liang were forerunners of modern “Cong wenhuashi, xueshushi, dao sixaingshi: Jin sanshinian Zhongguo xuejie zhuanbian de yige cemian,” 從文化史,學術史到思想史:近三十年中國學界轉變的一個側面 [From cultural history to academic history and intellectual history: a slice of the development of Chinese academia during the past three decades], in part 3 of Ma’s book, 259–89. 13. Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽, Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲學導論 [The framework of Under the Heaven: A philosophical introduction to world systems] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2011). 14. Yan Xuetong 閻學通 and Xu Jin 徐進, Wangba tianxia sixiang ji qidi 王霸天下思想及啓迪 [The thoughts of kingly hegemony and under the heaven and their illuminating lessons] (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2009). 15. Gan Yang甘陽, Tong santong 通三統 [Unifying three orthodoxies] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007). 16. David Elstein, Democracy and Contemporary Chinese Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2015), chap. 7. Jiang Qing 蔣慶, A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan, trans. Edmund Ryden (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 17. Wang Hui, Xiandai zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The rise of modern Chinese thought] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2004), 1:643–707. 18. Gloria Davies, Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 198.
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Gongyang school exegesis. Their interlocutors in the new millennium, however, are reluctant to consider the fictive or fantastic elements of their writings; they position themselves as thinkers rather than storytellers. At stake here is how one gauges the critical potential and liability of the utopian narrative in contemporary China. One cannot stress enough the precarious condition of China when Liang Qichao wrote The Future of New China. When Liang set out to write his novel in 1902, he could hardly see signs that China would turn into the dominant power of the following century. He adopted the form of fiction to describe his dream scenario for a new China, thus admitting indirectly to the desirable but inaccessible nature of utopia. The Future of New China was never finished, a fact that leads to some of the most contentious arguments about the novel. On the one hand, its incompleteness bespeaks the inherent aporia of any utopian engagement, as well as its tantalizing charm. On the other hand, however, its “future perfect” mood, as previously argued, mortgages the future and thus forecloses the multiple possibilities of an open ending. Liang Qichao’s respondents in the twenty-first century approach the utopian vision from the other end of the narrative spectrum. They still demonstrate the time-honored “crisis consciousness” (youhuan yishi 憂患意識) or, in Gloria Davies’s translation, a consciousness of “worrying about China.”19 But writing at a moment when China is “already” rising, these intellectuals appear to confront less pressing exigencies than Liang and his peers in late Qing; instead, they inject into their deliberations more assertive reasoning and (self-)righteous beliefs. Whereas Liang adopts the fictional form to utter his political agenda, they downplay the metahistorical dimension of their narratives, let alone their imaginative capacity. Here, I call attention to the Panglossian inclination of contemporary utopian discourses in China. A character in Voltaire’s novel Candide, Pangloss is known for his commitment to the philosophy of Leibniz, which celebrates the unconditional permeation of divine grace. In the story, the young Candide leads a sheltered childhood, indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor Dr. Pangloss. The young man is nevertheless thrown into a sequence of trials. One of the highlights of Candide’s journey is his visit to El Dorado, a utopia of equality and advanced science, free of greed, pretension, religious contention, and suffering. El Dorado is significant in its ability to highlight the unfortunate realities of the world beyond its borders. Nevertheless, it is too good a place to be true, and Candide has to return to the real world. His subsequent journey leads him through a series of horrible perils, transforming his sweetheart into an impossible shrew and making the utopia he is seeking unlivable. In the end, Candide and Dr. Pangloss seem to have found a peaceful life. Looking back, Pangloss concludes that all the suffering they have undergone make sense after all: all wrongs are inevitably righted by the universal divine design. In his words, “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” Candide, if not outright rejecting his mentor’s optimism, simply responds, “We must cultivate our garden.”20 By invoking the Panglossian inclination of modern Chinese discourses, I also have in mind the “Panglossian paradigm” that Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin invoked in their critique of evolutionary optimism. They take issue with biologists who view all traits of evolution as atomized things that had been naturally selected and 19. Davies, Worrying about China, chap. 1. 20. Voltaire, Candide, 224.
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thus leave no space to other causes or alternatives.21 Instead, they argue that contingencies and exaptation (the use of old features for new purposes) play an important role in the process of evolution. I argue a similar optimism abounds among Chinese scholars’ recent endeavors to project a majestic scenario on not only China’s future but also China’s past. They entertain the “strong” thought of modernity,22 as illustrated by the mandate of nation building and the demands of volition, reason, collectivity, and virility. Rhetorically, it finds manifestation in macroscopic (hongguan 宏觀) imagery, the “sublime figure,”23 and the “epic” representational system. To be sure, these scholars are still harboring a “crisis consciousness,” which by logic should have led to anything but Panglossianism. But, as if overcompensating for the complex of “worrying about China,” they play up their optimism and doggedly look for a way to explain the status quo by explaining away. They believe that the long-awaited historical turning point has come, and the legitimacy of the party-state, however disputable, has to be safeguarded. For all the ups and downs China has been through over the past decades, the current state is said to promise “the best of all best possible worlds.” For instance, Gan Yang’s “unification of three orthodoxies” attempts to streamline Confucian and Chinese Communist traditions in a way that mimics the Gongyang rhetoric of “three times.” Equally intriguing is Wang Hui’s “Zhongguo jueqi de jingyan jiqi mianlin de tiaozhan” 中國崛起的經驗及其面臨的挑戰 (The experience of the rise of China and the challenges it faces, 2010). In it, Wang argues that, although China has been ruled by one party since 1949 and therefore has been deemed undemocratic, the fact is that “during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s there existed within the Party a selfcorrection mechanism. Theoretical debate, particularly open theoretical debate, has played an important role in the course of the Party’s and the State’s self-adjustment and self-reform.”24 All wrongs are supposed to be righted by the magical “self-correction” system (zidong jiucuo jizhi 自動糾錯機制). Finally, speaking of the “Chinese Dream,” what could be more blatantly Panglossian than Zhang Xudong’s 張旭東 interpretation of the concept? For Zhang, “[Chinese Dream] is a discourse that links the concrete and the abstract, the particular and the universal, the self and the other, the individual and the collective, the practical and the theoretical, the economic and the cultural, the cultural and the political together. [Chinese Dream] expresses the universal structure both obliquely and clearly, resulting in a lively materiality.”25 I hasten to stress that I am not denigrating the value of these intellectuals’ utopian imaginary. Quite the contrary: precisely because they set out with a critical energy 21. Gould and Lewontin, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” 581–98. For an online reference, see http://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/GouldLewontin.pdf. I derive my understanding of Gould’s theory from “The Pattern of Life’s History,” in Brockman, The Third Culture, 52–64. 22. I am inspired by the “weak thought” Gianni Vattimo develops in The End of Modernity, trans. Jon R. Snyder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 23. Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 24. Wang Hui, “Zhongguo jueqi de jingyan jiqi mianlin de tiaozhan” 中國崛起的經驗及其面臨的挑戰 [The experience of the rise of China and the challenges it faces], Wenhua zongheng 文化縱横 [Cultural vista] 2 (2010). http://www.aisixiang.com/data/33011.html. 25. “在這些辯證的辨析過程中”中國夢話語可以把具體和抽象、特殊與普遍、自我與他人、個人與集體、實踐和 理論、經濟與文化、文化與政治打通勾連在一起,把一個總體性的結構曲折地然而清晰地敘述和表現出來,使 之獲得一種生動的實質性.” Zhang Xudong, “Zhongyu daole keyi tanmeng de shihou” 終於到了可以談夢 的時候 [A moment to speak of dream at long last], http://big5.qstheory.cn/gate/big5/www.qstheory.cn/ wh/sxdl/201307/t20130726_253157.htm.
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to rethink modern Chinese history, they deserve a serious dialogue. In view of the optimistic bearing of these discourses, I call for what Chang Hao describes as “dark consciousness.” For Chang, “dark consciousness” refers to “an attention to and critical reflection on the inherent dark side of humanity as well as the dark forces deeply rooted in the human society.”26 Chang points out the interrelation between “dark consciousness” and “crisis consciousness” but argues that the latter serves only as a pretext for the former. That is, if “crisis consciousness” points to the human awareness of historical contingencies and circumstantial perils, “dark consciousness” reminds us that there is something more ominous lurking behind intelligible historical experience, something that is “born with human nature and has ever loomed in human civilization.”27 Trained in the tradition of liberalism and Weberian thought, Chang derives his “dark consciousness” from his understanding of “original sin” in the Calvinist vein of Christianity. He contends that such an awareness of human fallibility propelled the communal effort to curb individual vice so as to facilitate the general good, thus giving rise to liberal democracy.28 As Chang argues, although short of the notion of the “original sin,” the Chinese intellectual tradition has its own legacy of “dark consciousness,” as represented by the Han epistemology of the fusion between heaven and the human, Confucian ruminations on humanity (Mencius’s belief in human perfectibility versus Xunzi’s 荀子 notion of human susceptibility to evil), the Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of fuxing 復性 (restoring essence/nature), among other traditions of thought. The neo-Confucian engagement with the fault line between humanity and its bestial nature, in an almost existential manner, is especially a striking case.29 Looking back at the political turmoil of modern China, which culminated in the Maoist regime, Chang cautions against the optimistic tenor of Chinese political thought, urging a critical reappraisal of not merely the “crisis consciousness” but the “dark consciousness” so as to anticipate a more nuanced analysis of Chinese modernity. Critics have pointed out the shortcomings of Chang Hao’s theory. The renowned Kantian/Confucian scholar Lee Ming-hui 李明輝, for instance, questions the applicability of Chang’s Weberian model to the Chinese context;30 Hu Ping 胡平 takes issue with his overarching critique of Confucianism and autocracy at the cost of historical specificity. One may even argue that Chang’s understanding of “dark consciousness” is not “dark” enough, as it is still limited to the (modern) humanistic mode of thinking: “dark consciousness” seems to arise merely from a short circuit of a very loosely defined “human nature.” Still, Chang’s critique offers a valuable perspective from which to engage the Panglossian tendency of contemporary Chinese discourses. Chang suggests 26. Zhang Hao (Hao Chang), “Chaoyue yishi yu youhuan yishi: Rujia neisheng waiwang sixiang zhizairen yu fanxing” 超越意識與憂患意識:儒家内聖外王思想之再認與反省 [Transcendental consciousness and dark consciousness: Rethinking of and reflection on the Confucian concept of inside the saint and outside the king], in Zhang Hao zixuanji, 37. 27. Ibid. 28. Zhang Hao, “Youan yishi yu minzhu chuantong,” 2–14. 29. Zhang Hao, “Chaoyue yishi yu youhuan yishi,” 42–43. 30. Lee Ming-hui 李明輝, Rujia shiye xia de zhengzhi sixiang 儒家視野下的政治思想 [Political Though in Confucian perspective], chap. 3, particularly 38–43, 51–53. Hu Ping 胡平, “Rujia renxinglun yu minzhu xianzheng: Yu Zhang Hao jiaoshou shangque” 儒家人性論與民主憲政:與張灝教授商榷 [Confucian humanism and democratic constitution: A dialogue with Professor Zhang Hao], in Zhongguo luntan 中國 論壇 [Chinese tribune] 347 (1991): 111–17. Also see Elstein, Democracy and Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, 102–4.
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that Chinese (political) thought has yet to make a break with the sage-king paradigm. This sage-king paradigm is said to have fostered what Chang calls an “ultimately optimistic” (zhongji leguan 終極樂觀) mode of thinking, which favors the ideas of human perfectibility and the communicability between human and heaven. It also provides the rationale for the system of theocracy (zhengjiao heyi 政教合一), which conflates human rulership with theological or ideological legitimacy. Most importantly, these factors help produce a strong inclination to utopianism—often in the form of anticipatory nostalgia for the return of a bygone paradisiacal state. “No one can deny the fact that modern political culture has been underlain by the tendencies of political authoritarianism, utopian mentality, and the concept of theocracy. And no one can deny the fact that these tendencies are rooted in the concept of sage-kingship, a residue of Chinese tradition.”31 Chang Hao’s critique of the “dark consciousness” in Chinese thought, or the lack thereof, rings uncannily true to the contemporary scene. Nevertheless, his proposed remedy may appear less effective. To rectify the optimistic mode of thinking of modern China, Chang has urged us to look into the premodern intellectual tradition for a diacritical perspective. But to do so may repeat the “cultural-intellectualistic approach” Chang and Yü-sheng Lin set out to critique. Nor does his proposed abstention from utopianism bring about a more creative way to understand history. This is where utopian literature and its dialectic other, dystopian literature, can help further our inquiry. I argue that where “grand talks” demonstrate their limitations in addressing historical and political issues at its most intricate, fiction, or “small talk,” appears to be more viable in penetrating opaque reality and making poignant diagnoses—and (de)constructive in offering solutions. But insofar as it is by definition an amorphous, “rootless” representation of human experience, can fiction transcribe and impeach evil and violence without betraying its own suspect nature? Hasn’t it already intimated the subversion of civilization by its inborn discontents? In my definition, “dark consciousness” does not merely point to the degeneracy of moral, religious, or ideological schemata (as conceived of by Chang or, by extension, Eagleton). Rather, it is a fictional power that facilitates the diacritical thrust of aporia from within, and beyond, the establishments of human values and beliefs where disturbance is least expected. “Dark consciousness” may register the frustrated yearning, forbidden desire, or elated sensation resulting from the “obsession with China,” but, precisely because it prompts an inquiry into the other side of consciousness, it cannot be gauged in terms of simple moral or political reasoning. Indeed, it manifests its radical agency by unveiling what Levinas calls “otherwise than being” and putting any optimistic resolutions in infinite contestation.32 At its most polemical, it exerts the abysmal force that voids established values as much as it begets “anticipation,” which, in Paula Iovene’s words, “involves the fears and aspirations that shape lives and narratives 31. “誰也不能否認:政治權威主義,烏托邦心態和政教合一的觀念曾經是近代政治文化的一些主導傾向。同時, 誰也不能否認這些傾向多少以中國傳統遺留下來的聖王觀念為其淵源。”Zhang Hao, “Chaoyue yishi yu youan yishi,” 48. For instance, when Jiang Qing talks about a Confucian democracy centered on a prescient leader, the ideal of sage-king rule looms large; when Wang Hui proposes “party-state” as a desirable mode of polity, his proposal flirts with socialist theocracy. More intriguing is the fact that they all envision future China, a postsocialist El Dorado, by harking back to the world of ancient China. 32. See Emmanuel Levinas’s argument of the narrative as a process of opening to the other—that which is yet to be uttered—vis-à-vis that which is already being said, Otherwise Than Being; Or beyond Essence (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1981), 5–9.
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in their very unfolding, and the perception of the possibilities and limits that inform human actions and are often mediated by literary texts.”33 Accordingly, in the literary domain of utopia, “dark consciousness” ushers one into the terra incognita where Panglossianism is identified only to be overwritten by the latitude of the unknown, and as a result the boundaries of utopia and dystopia become blurry. Coming to mind are examples such as Wu Jianren’s New Story of Stone, in which the Barbarous World and the Civilized World exist as each other’s (negative) reflections. But Lu Xun must be the one who depicts the most precarious terms between Panglossianism and dark consciousness. Lu Xun’s most engaging works deal not with the modernity projects as such but their setbacks,34 not coherent social and epistemological systems but the ruptures of those systems. In his words, he discovers “the abyss in the heaven, the void in the allencompassing, and salvation in despair.”35 Thus in his seminal treatment of Lu Xun, T. A. Hsia describes the master as caught at the “gate of darkness”36 that presumably divides despair and hope, dream and insomnia, life and afterlife, among other thematic antinomies. Most alarmingly, beneath the surface of Lu Xun’s campaign against cannibalism, something self-cannibalistic has ever loomed. Hence the living dead’s confession in “Mujiewen” 墓碣文 (Epitaph, 1925) “I tore out my heart to eat it, wanting to know the true taste. But the pain was so agonizing, how could I tell its taste?”37 If Lu Xun were to live in the postsocialist era, one wonders how he would respond to the contemporary calls for “under the heaven,” “three orthodoxies,” or “politicization of politics.” Literature, as Lu Xun would have it, engages one not only with social and political virtues versus evils, or utopia versus dystopia, but also with the “stratagem of unnamable entities” (wuwu zhizhen 無物之陣)—the amorphous existence of nothingness. For Lu Xun, revolutionary zeal generates as much iconoclastic momentum as “involutionary” desire, and enlightenment generates entropic desire and self-reflexive ambivalence; the dream threatens to become the nightmare at any moment. Speaking of dreams of the Chinese brand, Lu Xun had his own “interpretation of dreams” as early as 1933:38 To dream means freedom To talk about dream means no freedom To dream is to dream of something real, To talk about dream is inevitably to lie.39 33. Paola Iovene, Tale of Future Past: Anticipation and the End of Literature in Contemporary China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 3–4. 34. T. A. Hsia, “Aspects of the Power of Darkness in Lu Hsun,” in The Gate of Darkness (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 146–62. 35. “於天上看見深淵。於一切眼中看見無所有;於無所希望中得救。”Lu Xun quanji [Complete works of Lu Xun] (Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe, 2005), vol. 2:207; Lu Xun (Lu Hsun), Wild Grass, trans. Gladys Yang and Xianyi Yang (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1974), 44. 36. T. A. Hsia, “Aspects of the Power of Darkness in Lu Hsun,” 146–62. 37. Lu Xun, Wild Grass, 45. 38. For our concern, it is particularly interesting to observe how Zhu Guangqian’s and Lu Xun’s engagements with a modern lyrical subjectivity help open up Chinese “lyrical tradition.” The case in point is Tao Qian. For Zhu Guangqia, Tao Qian is the paragon of serenity, as he is able to transcend worldly attachment and attain a self-contained, lyrical plenitude. Quite to the contrary, for Lu Xun, it is Tao Qian’s indignation and melancholia when brought to face the mystery and challenge of life that informs his poetic world. In any event, the debate drives home the polemic nature of the lyrical discourse in the 1930s. 39. “做夢,是自由的,說夢,就不自由。做夢,是做真夢的,說夢,就難免說謊。”魯迅, “Tingshuomeng” 聽 説夢 [On dream interpretation], Luxun quanji, vol. 4, 281.
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Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia The fin-de-siècle boom of science fiction appeared as an uncanny recapitulation of the science fiction fever at the beginning of the modern century.40 In the postsocialist context, however, the phenomenon tells us something more. Insofar as Chinese socialist literature has been prescribed in terms of realism, be it called revolutionary realism, humanist realism, magic realism, romantic realism, or new realism, that science fiction writers since the 1990s have ventured to imagine and write the incredible and the impractical bespeaks a paradigmatic intervention with the canon. Indeed, at its most controversial, they set forth the terms of China’s entry into the new millennial age, both as a new political agenda and as a new national myth. More pertinent to our concerns is the way these works inaugurated the dystopian turn of contemporary China and as such serve as a dialogical force vis-à-vis the Panglossian trend that dominates the political and intellectual discourse. Dystopia became an even more noticeable genre in the new century.41 The renowned avant-garde writer Ge Fei’s 格非 (b. 1964) trilogy Wutuobang sanbuqu 烏托邦 三部曲 (Trilogy of utopia; part 1: Renmian taohua 人面桃花 [A peach blossom romance, 2005]; part 2: Shanhe rumeng 山河入夢 [Into the dreamscape of China, 2007]; part 3: Chunjin jiangnan 春盡江南 [Spring ends in the south of the Yangtze River, 2011]) relates in a lyrical, nostalgic style how Chinese projects of modernity—from the Republican Revolution to the Communist Revolution, from urban planning to rural reconstruction, from “free love” to “literary creativity”—have turned into one nightmare after another. When the dreamland proves to be a facade for the wasteland, utopia betrays its dystopian nature. Ge Fei packages his trilogy in a circuitous symbolism, such that it appears less provocative when compared with the works of two exiled writers, Cao Guanlong 曹冠龍 (b. 1945) in the United States and Ma Jian 馬建 (b. 1952) in England. In Chen 沉 (Sinking, 2009), Cao focuses on a most atrocious incident from the Cultural Revolution: an alleged episode of cannibalism in Guangxi Province. He describes how “eating man” becomes a gastronomic and political festivity in a society immersed in fanaticism and how, at its most outrageous, Lu Xun’s “Kuangren riji” 狂人日記 (The diary of a madman) has a twenty-first-century revision. In Ma Jian’s Rouzhitu 肉之土 (Beijing coma, 2010), a young June Fourth protestor is gunned down in the Tian’anmen massacre and has since been in a state of coma. Although his body is withering away, the young man’s subconscious remains vibrant. In his dreams, he wanders into the world of the classic Shanhai jing 山海經 (Classic of mountains and seas) where immortals and monstrous creatures, bizarre vegetation, and astonishing landscapes interact and form a robust, ever-changing world. Combing eschatological prophecy and political satire, these novels cast bleak visions of China’s future and as such pit themselves against the sublime, euphoric writings mastered by political campaigners and wishful intellectuals. However, one discerns no less the limitations of these works. In haste to set up the conflict between dystopia and utopia, the writers tend to risk the pitfall of an easy dialectic, making their narratives a mere negative of that which is upheld by mainstream discourse. It is in another group 40. See my discussion in Fin-de-Siècle Splendor, chap. 5. 41. For a comprehensive discussion of the dystopian theme in contemporary Chinese novels, see Jeffrey Kinkley, Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
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of fictional writings that we come across a more ambiguous, and therefore more ambitious, attempt to engage both utopian and dystopian genres. In Han Song’s 2066: Red Star over America, the year 2066 marks a turning point in the Sino-American relationship. By then, America has suffered a series economic and political disasters, while China has become a “garden-like” superpower. A prodigy of the game Go is sent to a competition in the United States, only to be caught up in a second civil war. As such, Han Song seems to relate a revanchist fantasy of the type that has obsessed many writers since the late Qing. But Han has more to tell us. China is said to have achieved its superpower status by succumbing to Amando (阿曼多), an artificial intelligence that preprograms everyone’s life and oversees happiness in every possible way. Even then, Amando collapses when mysterious Martians descend to Earth, turning China into the Land of Promise (fudi 福地). Incidentally, the Chinese expression fudi is also a euphemism for cemetery—a land for the dead. It will be recalled that part of this novel’s title is inspired by Red Star over China (1937), a reportage by Edgar Snow (1905–1972) and arguably the first account in the English-speaking world to unveil life in Yan’an, the wartime Chinese Communist mecca. By playing with Snow’s title, Han Song prompts the reader to rethink the geopolitics of utopia in terms of socialist (China), capitalist (the United States), and extraterrestrial space. His conclusion could not be more ambiguous. Above all, the novel is a flashback set in 2126, the future of future, when all earth civilization, be it socialist or capitalist, has been terminated. Liu Cixin’s 劉慈欣 (b. 1963) Santi 三體 (Three-Body Problem, 2007),42 Heian senlin 黑 暗森林 (Dark jungle, 2008), and Sishen yongsheng 死神永生 (God of death lives forever, 2010) constitute his trilogy Diqiu wangshi 地球往事 (Chronicles of the earth). It assumes an epic scope that spans over millions of years and ought to be regarded as one of the most ambitious works in contemporary Chinese fiction. Mixing the Cultural Revolution and Star Wars, historical pathos and outer space marvels, Liu has created a chronotope his peers can hardly emulate. But Liu’s works are not only a fantastic spectacle but also an inquiry into the ethical terms of such a spectacle. The Three-Body Problem relates a woman scientist’s revenge of her father’s purge and death in the Cultural Revolution by inviting the extraterrestrial creatures Three Body to invade earth. A group of Chinese citizens are drafted to help prevent the impending global holocaust. These heroes travel through the tunnel of time, engaging in ingenious tactics and fighting cosmic battles. Meanwhile, it turns out that Chairman Mao has long foreseen the futuristic star wars and implemented a preemptive plan. Because of its grand scope and majestic style, critics have called Liu’s fiction a sublime work.43 True, Liu’s works induce awe by introducing an apocalyptic view of world civilization in crisis. He asks whether human rationality can generate a (political) science that is anything but rational; whether history presented in the “future perfect” mood can redeem bygone or ongoing mishaps; whether a filial daughter’s vengeful 42. Santi or “three-body” refers to a specific mathematic term, a theoretical problem that scientists have been trying to solve over the past two centuries. Basic information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Three-body_problem. 43. Jia Liyuan 賈立元, “Zhujiu women de weilai: Jiushi niandai zhijin Zhongguo kehuan xiaoshuo zhongde zhongguo xingxiang yanjiu” 築就我們的未來: 九十年代至今中國科幻小説中的中國形象研究 [Achieving our future: Study on China’s image in Chinese science fiction since 1990s], MA thesis, Beijing Normal University (2010): 30–46.
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wrath can override her professional commitment to social well-being; whether a national leader can be both a savior of humanity and a perpetrator of crimes against humanity. Liu refuses to give easy answers to his questions; instead, he plays them out against the gigantic cosmic backdrop, thereby soliciting an effect that sustains as much as it subverts the “Maoist sublime” his fictional vision originates with. Finally, we come to Shengshi 盛世 (The fat years, 2009) by Chan Koonchung 陳冠中 (b. 1952), a Hong Kong writer currently based in Beijing. The novel starts with a global economic crash in 2011, which paralyzes all leading countries except China. Thanks to shrewd national leadership, we are told, China is able to take advantage of the crisis and further its economic development and sociopolitical solidarity. As a result, China can already boast as early as 2013 the arrival of shengshi, a historical epoch of peace and prosperity. While the majority of Chinese citizens welcome the golden time, there are signs, such as a prevailing mood of jubilation called “high lite lite” and massive amnesia, that arouse suspicion among a few nonconformists. To find out the truth, they kidnap a “national leader,” only to learn something that they never could have imagined. Published in 2009, the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, The Fat Years reminds one of Liang Qichao’s Future of New China, the arch-modern Chinese novel that imagines the prosperity fifty years after the founding the Republic of Great China. A reader familiar with The Future of New China would be surprised by the chiasmatic paradoxes permeating The Fat Years. Sixty years after the Chinese Communist Revolution, China has accomplished what Liang Qichao could only have dreamed of at the turn of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens appear to have succumbed to the benevolent hegemony of the party-state. That Chan marks 2013 as the year when the Chinese leader came to declare the Chinese supremacy over the world uncannily anticipates Xi Jinping’s announcement of the “Chinese Dream.” Compared with the works discussed above, The Fat Years may fall short in presenting either an epic vision or a sinister prophecy. It nevertheless creates a style of its own by linking futuristic fantasy with contemporary issues of journalistic relevance. Contrary to fiction in the vein of A Brave New World or 1984, The Fat Years does not aim merely to expose the evil scheme of a seemingly benign rule; it seeks instead to tell the other side of the story, thus making the captive national leader its hero. Suave, cool, and a little jaded, the national leader surprises everyone with a nightlong, tell-all confession. According to him, the primary goal of the government is to make people happy; to that end, making use of the means necessary for the maintenance of social order should be deemed justified. Marketization is said to be only one of the measures adopted to enhance socialist life; liberalism and neo-Leftism are treated as chips of an ideological game. We are also told that the people are dosed with MDMA, the “ecstasy” drug, through their drinking water, which helps them forget anything that hampers a healthy revolutionary memory. To return to my argument, however, the national leader’s talent lies nowhere but in his skill at rhetoric. He eloquently describes the past and future of China as well as the challenges it is faced with, concluding that the current government represents the best possible regime one can ever think of. His confession—nay, storytelling—is so moving that he manages in the end to persuade his kidnappers to release him so that he can better serve the people. Thus, Chan tells a story in which the national leader turns out to be not only a competent administrator but also the most mesmerizing “storyteller”—in
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the genre of utopia. Through his projection of the golden future of China, a sublime effect is achieved; in the sense of not the “Maoist sublime” but the “most sublime hysteric” as defined by Slavoj Žižek.44 The Fat Years is predictably censored in China. But the lesson one draws from Chan’s novel should not be limited to political allegory or censorship. Rather, the fact that, among all media and discursive genres, Chan has invested his political agenda in the form of narrative fiction must lead one to rethink Liang Qichao’s fictional engagement more than a century ago. Nevertheless, whereas Liang Qichao launched the polemics of fiction as utopia, Chan (and like-minded fellow writers such as Han Song and Liu Cixin), makes fiction into a cartography of the “dark consciousness” that haunts the human struggle for self-betterment. How to come to terms with such a consciousness by teasing out its dialogical potential remains a task as urgent in our time as ever. With the anomalous and polymorphous mediation of fiction, we find ourselves imagining dystopia and heterotopia in the hope of a future in which such an imagination would scarcely be needed. And yet at any fold of time we may come to realize that, without the imagination of darkness at even the brightest moment of history, we are unprepared to recognize it in its future incarnations. For this reason all modernities bear the imprint of primitive savagery, and all utopian projects presuppose their own negations. To conclude my survey of modern Chinese utopia in terms of Panglossian dream versus “dark consciousness,” I refer to the ending of The Fat Years. At the end of the novel, Chan’s characters turn their backs on the golden space they are supposed to inhabit and decide to pursue their own dreams elsewhere. Chan thus asks a difficult question as to individual choice when membership in a utopia has become available— or even mandatory. In these characters’ adventure into the domain of “dark consciousness,” Lu Xun’s words resound: There is something I dislike in heaven; I do not want to go there. There is something I dislike in hell; I do not want to go there. There is something I dislike in your future golden world; I do not want to go there.45
Bibliography Bloch, Ernst. The Spirit of Utopia. Translated by Anthony Nassar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Brockman, John, ed. The Third Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Davies, Gloria. Worrying about China: The Language of Chinese Critical Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Elstein, David. Democracy and Contemporary Chinese Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2015. Gan Yang. Tong santong 通三統 [Unifying three orthodoxies]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007. Gould, Stephen, and Richard Lewontin. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” In Proceedings in the Royal Society of London Biological Science 205 (1161): 581–98. Hsia, T. A. “Aspects of the Power of Darkness in Lu Hsun.” In The Gate of Darkness, 146–62. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.
44. Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, chap. 1; Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989). Also see Žižek, The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan (Cambridge: Polity, 2014). 45. 魯迅,〈影的告別〉,“有我所不樂意的在天堂裡,我不願去;有我所不樂意的在地獄裡,我不願去;有我所 不樂意的在你們將來的黃金世界裡,我不願去.”Lu Xun, “The Shadow’s Leaving-Taking,” Wild Grass, 8.
David Der-wei Wang 69 Hu Ping 胡平. “Rujia renxinglun yu minzhu xianzheng: Yu Zhang Hao jiaoshou shangque” 儒 家人性論與民主憲政:與張灝教授商榷 [Confucian humanism and democratic constitution: A dialogue with Professor Zhang Hao]. In Zhongguo luntan 中國論壇 [Chinese tribune] 347 (1991): 111–17. Iovene, Paola. Tale of Future Past: Anticipation and the End of Literature in Contemporary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeology of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2007. Jia Liyuan. “Zhujiu women de weilai: Jiushi niandai zhijin Zhongguo kehuan xiaoshuo zhongde zhongguo xingxiang yanjiu” 築就我們的未來:九十年代至今中國科幻小説中的中國形象研究 [Achieving our future: Study on China’s image in Chinese science fiction since 1990s]. MA thesis, Beijing Normal University, 2010. Jiang, Qing. A Confucian Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Political Future. Edited by Daniel A. Bell and Ruiping Fan. Translated by Edmund Ryden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times. London: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Kinkley, Jeffrey. Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Lee, Ming-hui 李明輝. Rujia shiye xia de zhengzhi sixiang 儒家視野下的政治思想 [Political thought in Confucian perspective]. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005. Levinas, Emmanuel. Otherwise Than Being; Or beyond Essence. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1981. Liang Qichao. “Lun Xiaoshuo yu qunzhi zhiguanxi” 論小説與群治之關係 [On the relationship between fiction and ruling the people]. In Yinbingshi wenji dianjiao 飲冰室文集點校 [Ice drinker studio collection of writings, annotated edition], vol. 2. Kunming: Yunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001. Lu, Xun (Lu Hsun). Wild Grass. Translated by Gladys Yang and Xianyi Yang. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1974. Ma Licheng. Dangdai Zhongguo bazhong shehui sichao 當代中國八種社會思潮 [Eight social thoughts in contemporary China]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2012. Masini, Federico. The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution toward a National Language. Berkeley: Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 1997. Meisner, Maurice. Marxism, Maoism and Utopianism: Eight Essays. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Paradis, James, and George Williams, ed. T. H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Schwartz, Benjamin. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yan Fu and the West. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964. Tally, Robert, Jr. Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World-System. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. Vattimo, Gianni. The End of Modernity. Translated by Jon R. Snyder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Voltaire. Candide. Translated and edited by Robert Adams. New York: Norton, 1991. Wang, Ban. The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang, David Der-wei. Fin-de-Siècle Splendor: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fiction, 1849–1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Wang Hui, Xiandai zhongguo sixiang de xingqi 現代中國思想的興起 [The rise of modern Chinese thought]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2004. ———. “Zhongguo jueqi de jingyan jiqi mianlin de tiaozhan” 中國崛起的經驗及其面臨的挑戰 [The experience of the rise of China and the challenges it faces]. Wenhua zongheng 文化縱横 [Cultural vista] 2 (2010). Yan Fu, trans. Tianyan lun 天演論 [Evolution and ethics by Thomas Huxley]. Taiwan: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2009.
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Yan Jianfu 顔健富. Cong shenti dao shijie: Wanqing xiaoshuo de xingainian ditu 從身體到世界:晚清 小説的新概念地圖 [From the body to the world: The new conceptual mapping of late Qing fiction]. Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2014. Yan Xuetong and Xu Jin. Wangba tianxia sixiang ji qidi 王霸天下思想及啓迪 [The thoughts of kingly hegemony and under the heaven and their illuminating lessons]. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2009. Zhang Hao. “Chaoyue yishi yu youhuan yishi: Rujia neisheng waiwang sixiang zhizairen yu fanxing” 超越意識與憂患意識:儒家内聖外王思想之再認與反省 [Transcendental consciousness and dark consciousness: Rethinking of and reflection on the Confucian concept of inside the saint and outside the king]. In Zhang Hao zixuanji 張灝自選集 [Work of Zhao Hao, author’s edition]. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. ———. “Youan yishi yuminzhu chauntong” 幽暗意識與民主傳統 [Dark consciousness and the democratic tradition]. In Zhang Hao zixuanji 張灝自選集 [Work of Zhao Hao, author’s edition]. Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. Zhao Tingyang. Tianxia tixi: Shijie zhidu zhexue daolun 天下體系:世界制度哲學導論 [The framework of Under the Heaven: A philosophical introduction to world systems]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2011. Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. ———. The Most Sublime Hysteric: Hegel with Lacan. Cambridge: Polity, 2014.
Part II Provocations
4
Nihilism beneath Revolutionary Utopianism On Wang Jingwei’s “Self-Willed Sacrifice”
Xu Jilin Translated by Hang Tu
From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, China went through an unprecedented era of transformation, which tremendously impacted the traditional literati. Under the imperial examination system, the literati, despite their different intellectual dispositions, shared a similar path in their official careers. However, after the abolishment of the civil service examination in 1905, elite intellectuals found themselves displaced in society and creating a supply of “free-floating resources,” as described by Talcott Parsons. Some were reincorporated by the new social system and became soldiers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and publishers; the rest of them, however, could not find a place within the system and became so-called wandering scholars (遊士). Wandering scholars are those rootless intellectuals roaming at the margin of the social system or at risk of falling out of it. Du Yaquan, editor in chief of the journal Eastern Miscellany (東方雜誌) around one hundred years ago, may have been the first to pay attention to the phenomenon of “wandering scholars.” He noted that riots and revolutions that took place at the end of dynasties usually involved two kinds of people: “vagrants” (遊民) from the surplus laboring class and “wandering scholars” from the surplus intelligentsia. Chinese scholars in some cases can be identified as the upper class when they thrive within the imperial institution. But once they are abandoned by the institution, they can be assimilated into the vagrant class as well. Wandering scholars like Song Jiang from The Water Margin would become leaders of vagrants’ rebellions and even end up guiding a revolution that overturns a dynasty. At the same time, they themselves might be tainted with some characteristics of the vagrant culture. According to Du Yaquan, they “admire knights-errant, appreciate a bold life-style free from restraints and indifferent to livelihoods and share an indignation against the authorities and the rich.”1 The culture of wandering scholars, similar to its counterpart in the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period, was intertwined with the knight-errant 1. Du Yanquan, “Zhongguo zhengzhigeming buzu chengjiu ji shehui geming bu fasheng zhi yuanyin” 中 國政治革命不足成就及社會革命不發生之原因 [Reasons Why Political and Social Revolutions in China Did Not Succeed], Du Yaquan Wencun 杜亞泉文存 [Collected works of Du Yaquan] (Shanghai: Jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003), 182–83.
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tradition. Individuals like Wu Yue, who in 1905 activated a suicide bomb in an attempt to assassinate five ministers the Qing government had sent to the West, and Tan Sitong, who in 1911 was executed for his active role in the Hundred Days’ Reform, exemplify a knight-errant culture, prevalent in China, that celebrated sacrifices and assassination. In this regard, the Tongmenghui, or the Chinese United League, can be viewed as a revolutionary society of knight-errant-like wandering scholars. It was not a coincidence that the league was established the same year that the imperial examination system was abolished and a career as a traditional scholar-official was no longer an option for intellectuals. From Sun Yat-sen to Huang Xing, none of the members of the Tongmenghui were literati in a traditional sense. A shared sense of alienation from the social system brought them together overseas and led them to a path of becoming professional revolutionaries. No wonder Zhang Taiyan would comment that “revolutions in the past are called riots of bandits; revolutions nowadays are called rebellions of intellectuals.” The anti-Manchu revolution in the late Qing was in fact a “rebellion of intellectuals,” or a revolution of wandering scholars. This chapter examines Wang Jingwei’s early revolutionary career by placing him into the intellectual dynamics of late Qing and early Republican China. A man remembered by contemporary Chinese as a traitor to the nation and a notorious collaborator with the Japanese, Wang nevertheless spent his early life as a revolutionary hoping to transform China through radical measures. How do we explain the metamorphosis of Wang’s thinking, from practicing violent revolution for national rejuvenation to advocating “peace movement” under the aegis of the Japanese? Instead of proposing a radical break in Wang, I contextualize the formation of Wang’s early thinking to a multiplicity of intellectual ferments of the late Qing and early Republican era, from his education in classical learning to his fascination with Russian populism and nihilism, from the sediments of neo-Confucianism to the transformative lure of revolutionary idealism. By showcasing Wang’s complex relations to these intellectual genealogies and ideological resources, I hope to restore the political and social circumstances that gave rise to Wang’s generation of intellectuals: their ideals and ideologies, hopes and fears, choices and impacts. Wang was born in the late Qing into an intellectual family in Shaoxing, Zhejing Province. Wang’s grandfather, a juren who passed the provincial exam, had been a school official in Zhejiang. Wang’s father, however, having failed the provincial exam many times, became a contracted adviser on legal and fiscal issues for county officials in Guangdong in order to support his family. This was a typical career choice for scholars from Shaoxing who did not pass the exam. He taught Wang Jingwei himself and had high expectations for this son who was born to him when he was already sixty-two years old. Wang Jingwei epitomizes the modern revolutionary and intellectual: Instead of coming from an impoverished peasant background, they often came from once-prosperous but now-declining intellectual or merchant families. Why was this the case? They usually learned their aspiration to save the world through their Confucian education, which was accessible only when one was born into a well-off family. If a family’s fortune did not decline, then a young man could simply continue to live carefree. Even if he failed the imperial examination, he could always purchase a post and become a part of the state apparatus. Only those who fell from prosperity to poverty would associate the decline of their families with the degeneration of the country and develop an
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intense discontent and a desire to resist. These people thus possessed the characteristics of both aristocrats and vagrants. Du Yaquan analyzes them as follows: “The intelligentsia in our country have always been living in aristocratic and vagrant cultures, and hence the duality in their nature: the aristocratic side of them is boastful, arrogant, and peremptory. They tend to impose their ideas on others and assume an air of selfimportance while despising ordinary people as all unworthy; their vagrant side, on the other hand, is often frivolous, restless, and radical. They tend to destroy, usually with hatred, treating all ordinary people as evil. Usually one may manifest his vagrant side in adversity and the aristocratic side when doing well. Or one may manifest his vagrant side on surface while maintain his aristocratic nature at root.”2 Wang Jingwei is a good example of this aristocrat-vagrant duality. He was at one time a talented student in a traditional sense—coming in first place in the county-level exam. Later he received an official scholarship to study in Japan when the imperial examination was about to be abolished. During his years at Tokyo Hosei University, Wang’s idols changed from Confucian sages to heroic rebels and military statesmen such as Saigō Takamori and Katsu Kaishū. In 1905, Wang Jingwei joined Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing to establish the Tongmenghui and became the head of its department of social critique. A quick thinker and a capable writer, he soon became a core writer for Minbao (People’s journal). In the combat between Minbao and Xinmin Congbao (New people’s review), edited by Liang Qichao, Wang became famous for his polemic exchanges with this well-known reformist. Wang was also an eloquent orator. He traveled to Southeast Asia to promote the revolutionary agenda of the Tongmenghui, which brought him numerous followers, including his wife. From the beginning of its establishment, there had been two types of members in the Tongmenghui, the man of action and the writer. The former is represented by Huang Xing, Song Jiaoren and Hu Hanmin, who came from the lower class and possessed an ability to mobilize. They were adept at communicating with people with various backgrounds and were devoted to connecting with other parties and societies while infiltrating their influence in the New Armies, the modernized army corps of the Qing. The second category was represented by Wang Jingwei, Chen Tianhua, and Yang Dusheng, who were good at writing propaganda and passionate about anti-Manchu movement yet lacked persistence and patience. Revolution is politics in its extreme. It contains glory as well as filth, dramatic climaxes as well as quotidian banality, which these intellectuals could not bear. They had wished their revolutionary enterprise to remain as pure as possible and therefore were repelled by the “dirty hands” of politics. When confronted by frustrations, they tended to go to extremes. Chen Tianhua and Yang Dusheng both committed suicide, while Wang Jingwei dreamed of becoming a heroic assassin like Jingke. These intellectuals who worked for Minbao were often labeled as “long-distance revolutionaries” by their rivals. At the same time, they witnessed the infighting among factions within their own revolutionary camp. This situation stimulated Wang Jingwei to take further action and plot an assassination. He wrote to Sun Yat-sen, “We comrades gathered in Hong Kong and took our vows to fight against the Manchu until our death. We should manifest our resolution as revolutionaries through real deeds in order to 2. Du Yanquan, “Zhongguo zhengzhigeming buzu chengjiu ji shehui geming bu fasheng zhi yuanyin,” in Du Yaquan Wencun, 183–84.
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bring enthusiasm back to the disheartened, and bring faith back to the doubtful. If my trip to Beijing could awaken China, the sleeping lion, and ignite the anti-Manchu revolutionary fire, then the aspiration to sacrifice of our generation will be fulfilled.”3 He was so determined that even Hu Hanmin, his comrade in the Tongmenghui and colleague at Minbao, failed to dissuade him from this assassination plan. In “The Resolution of Revolution,” Wang compares the revolution to the process of cooking rice, which requires revolutionaries to take two different roles: one is the firewood that burns to ashes; the other is the pot that must endure the scorching fire. Only cooperation between firewood and pot could cook a pot of “revolutionary rice” for 400 million people in China. Wang Jingwei was aware that, despite his fearlessness, he did not possess the patience required for the long-term enterprise of revolution. He wrote a letter to Hu Hanmin in his own blood: “I am going to be the firewood now; you should become the pot.” He then started his irreversible journey to assassinate the regent of the Qing, Prince Chun. Why did Wang Jingwei prefer to be a doomed martyr rather than a victorious hero? Intellectual revolutionaries like Wang Jingwei were often impatient with politics and obsessed with romantic self-destruction. As Li Zhiyu analyzes, “In the eyes of revolutionaries, one’s life is meaningless unless it is devoted into a larger meaning. An individual obtains meaning by transforming his material and mortal life into a formless and eternal spirit and leaving behind one’s name in history. Once inscribed in history, one’s death is no longer the end of life, but rather the beginning of a true life.”4 What was the ultimate motivation behind this striking spirit of martyrdom from Tan Sitong, Wu Yue, to Wang Jingwei? At first glance, it seems to be an ideal of revolutionary utopianism combined with a spirit of Confucian benevolence. However, beneath this utopianism was in fact nihilism. The great transformation that took place in the late Qing was concomitant with the collapse of the organic cosmology that composed the core of the traditional value system and allowed one to find one’s position in a restrained life and hence transcended the boundary between life and death. However, in the late Qing, the once-entrenched value system became uncertain and unreliable. One could rely only on free will and the desire for creation. Wang Yangming’s learning of the mind, which is similar to the modern discourse of free will, prevailed in the late Qing. In his youth, Wang Jingwei became a faithful follower of this school of thinking. However, at this historical moment, the objective and reliable “heavenly principle” (天理), which supports one’s “innate knowing” (良知) in Wang Yangming’s theory, had faded. When the value system became empty, a nihilism that came from Russia took over the revolutionaries’ hearts. There were two generations of Russian nihilists in the nineteenth century. The first generation was the aristocratic intellectuals who found themselves displaced under the impact of Slavophilia and Westernization and hence could resort only to a belief in nothingness. They doubted everything but exalted free will. The second generation put its faith in action and became anarchists. Its most extreme practice was the act of assassination. Late Qing revolutionaries admired both generations of Russian nihilists. 3. Wang Jingwei, “Zhi Sun Zhongshan xiansheng shu” 致孫中山先生書 [A Letter to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, December, 1909], in Wang Wei Shi Hanjian, ed. Huang Meizhen (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1986), 13. 4. Li Zhiyu, Jingxuan: Wang Jingwei de zhengzhishengya 驚弦:汪精衛的政治生涯 [The twang of bowstrings: The political career of Wang Jingwei] (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2014), 17.
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As early as 1903, an essay was published in the journal Jiangsu under the pen name “Yuansun” enthusiastically extolling Russian nihilists: “How great are the nihilists! Aren’t they admirable and worth following!”5 Wang Jingwei must have shared a similar perspective with this author. A nihilist does not believe in settled value and despises authority. Whether in Russia or late Qing China, nihilists were often anarchists in terms of their political disposition. They resisted any form of violence, oppression, or inequity while looking forward to a utopia of freedom. However, the freedom they were pursuing was not synonymous with the liberty under the Anglo-American systems of legal rights but was rather closer to the free will and self-fulfillment found in continental philosophy. When Wang Yangming’s learning of the mind encountered Russian nihilism in the late Qing, it gave birth to a strong volitionism. A nihilist ideal of utopia is also a volitionist one, which puts faith in nothing but free will. The late Qing assassins firmly believed that the power of individual free will could easily overturn the authoritarian regime and create a new brand of nation-state and even a new world. Deeply disheartened by repeated failures of the revolutionaries, Wang Jingwei decided that the act of assassination was the only way he could display his individual will to resist. When Wang Jingwei was arrested for his failed attempt to assassinate the regent, the police found the copies of “The Tendency of the Revolution” and “The Resolution of Revolution,” the articles he published in Minbao, in his underclothes; they asked him for the reason he had them. Wang replied proudly, “I just feel that to write with ink is not enough. I want to write with my own blood. That’s why I bring them with me so that they could be tainted with my blood when I die.”6 Wang Jingwei was writing history and recreating himself with his own blood. He did not care whether the assassination would succeed. What mattered more was the display of his free will, personality, and morality and the theatrical effect that would provoke sympathy and resonate with the public. This is an aesthetic of resistance replete with quasi-religious appeal. The aesthetic value of his action goes beyond its political meaning. For ancient Chinese sages, there were three ways to immortality: virtues, deeds, and words. Publishing in Minbao had earned the young Wang Jingwei fame and enabled him to “establish his words” (立言). However, Wang Jingwei could not see any prospect of “establishing his deeds” (立功) through revolution. As a nihilist, he would rather “establish his virtues” (立德) through a heroic moment of sacrifice. However, sacrificing one’s own life is definitely not an easy job. It takes a unique understanding and perhaps a previous experience of death. Wang Jingwei’s parents died when he was young. “Loneliness and death cast shadow on his young and sensitive heart. He constantly felt overwhelmed by his misery.”7 According to Li Zhiyu, Wang Jingwei developed a special awareness of the transience of life through his childhood trauma. In “My Mind Laid Bare,” he writes, “Our life is hemmed in by birth and death. Our mind is swayed by joy and sorrow. What shall we do with our life? Where shall we repose our mind?”8 (形骸有生死,性情有哀樂。此生何所為,此情何所托?) How to surpass the 5. Yuan Sun, “Luxiya xuwudang” 露西亞虛無黨 [Russian nihilists], in Xinhai Geming Qianshinianjian Lunxuanji, vol. 1 辛亥革命前十年論選集 (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 1960), 567. 6. Wang Jingwei, “Zishu” 自述 [An Account of Myself]], Eastern Miscellany 31, no. 1 (1934). 7. Li, Jingxuan , 16. 8. Wang Jingwei, “Xinhai yuzhong shuhuai” 辛亥獄中述懷 [My mind laid bare], in Wang Jingwei quanji, vol. 2 汪精衛全集, 第二卷 (Shanghai: Sanmin gongsi, 1929), 26. For a complete translation of this poem, see
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fickleness of life? Ever since the late Qing, a discourse of the “small self” (小我) was pitted against the “greater self” (大我). A “small self” is a self with a physical form, while the “greater self” is a self with an elevated spirit. Only when an individual and limited “small self” is devoted into and merged within the national or historical “grand self” could it acquire an eternal and immortal value. There are many ways for a “small self” to transcend and become part of a “grand self.” Wang Jingwei chose the simplest, the most splendid, and the most aesthetic one: self-sacrifice. His place in history was consolidated through this gesture of self-sacrifice. By surviving his legendary arrest, Wang Jingwei became an embodiment of revolution, the spirit of martyrdom, and moral virtue. He was known as a sage among revolutionary circles. At the beginning of the Republican era, there was such a saying among revolutionaries: when electing a president, “by the standard of deeds, it should be Huang Xing; by the standard of intelligence, it should be Song Jiaoren; by the standard of moral virtue, it should be Wang Jingwei.”9 He had been written into history among those “immortals.” To further confirm this moralist impression, Wang Jingwei joined other intellectual revolutionaries such as Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui in founding the Society for the Promotion of Morality (進德會). They took an oath not to take any official posts in order to maintain their moral purity. However, when Sun Yat-sen reorganized his revolutionary team in the south and summoned Wang Jingwei to come back from France because of the lack of cadres, Wang became involved at the highest level of Kuomintang (KMT) politics. After Sun passed away, Wang, along with Chiang Kai-shek and Hu Hanmin, became one of three leading figures of the KMT who possessed their own factions and human resources. The real field of politics, which revolves around power, is different from intellectuals’ ideal of revolution. It requires the politicians’ professional ethics. They have to take responsibility not only for their own faith but also for reality. According to Max Weber, there are three preeminent qualities that are crucial to the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. Judging by these three standards, was Wang Jingwei, as one of highest leaders of the KMT party and the nation, a competent politician? Wang Jingwei was certainly not lacking in passion. On the contrary, he was replete with a poetic passion. He was not only an intellectual revolutionary but also a poet. In the transition from the late Qing to the Republican era, Wang acted as the core member of the South Society (南社), a literary society in which revolutionaries gathered, drinking and writing prose and poetry. Liu Yazi, its founder, regarded Wang Jingwei as a representative figure of the South Society because of his poetic characteristics.10 The old-style verses composed by Wang Jingwei, no matter how feverish his early works or self-lamenting those of his later years, are all considered to be outstanding in modern Chinese poetry. However, as Cao Juren has pointed out, intellectual revolutionaries Wang Jingwei, Poems of Wang Ching-wei, trans. Seyuan Shu (London: Shenval Press, 1938), 21. 9. Hu Hanmin, Hu Hanmin zizhuan 胡漢民自傳 [The autobiography of Hu Hanmin] (Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1982), 63. 10. Liu Yazi, “Guanyu ‘jiniannanshe’: Gei Cao Juren xiansheng de gongkaixin” 關於《紀念南社》:給曹聚 仁先生的公開信 [A Letter to Mr. Cao Juren regarding his ‘In Memory of the South Society,’ February 13, 1936], in Liu Yazi Xuanji, ed. Wang Jingyao, Wang Zhuang, Sun Caixia (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1998), 361.
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from the South Society could never abandon their romanticism. They participated in politics in a poetic way; “they had revolutionary passion but no revolutionary technique. They made great contribution to the destruction of the old regime yet failed to demonstrate their capability in reconstructing the society.”11 From the Tongmenghui to the KMT, the revolutionaries as a society of wandering scholars were composed of two groups of members with distinct characteristics. According to Cao Juren, Chinese politics from the late Qing to the early Republican era was formed by the “military governance” (武治) represented by Chen Yingshi and the “cultural governance” (文治) represented by the South Society. From Chen Yingshi (or Chen Qimei) to Chiang Kai-shek, there was a genealogy of politicians who came from the lower class, roamed around Shanghai for a long time, and thus were tainted as gangsters. They tended to have an accurate sense of the larger picture and an adept and sometimes brutal ability to manipulate political scenarios. Intellectual revolutionaries who shared similar background with Wang Jingwei were less capable of such manipulation because of their poetic natures. In the intricate and cruel struggles within the party, lofty and innocent “men of conception” could never compete with those experienced “men of practice.” Wang Jingwei was immature as a politician. He displayed at once the lack of excessive desire for power and the necessary respect for the value of politics per se, which was often manifested as his “intentional alienation from political struggles. He took such struggles and pursuits of power to be filthy and unworthy.”12 Although Wang Jingwei was smart and sensitive, he nevertheless lacked “a sense of proportion” about the international and domestic situation of China, and he tended to impose his willful imagination on others. During his years in Wuhan when he, with other leftists within the KMT, allied with the Communist camp, he was ignorant of the nature of the Soviet Union and its policy toward China. In the 1930s, as the premier of the Executive Yuan, he became the leading figure to promote a peace policy with Japan, and he cooperated with Japanese prime minister Konoe Fumimaro in the “Peace Movement.” However, he was not aware of the complicated nature of Japanese politics and hence easily believed the Japanese guarantee of peace. He thought he could make use of the Japanese, but the Japanese in fact used him. He overlooked the fact that, given its vast territories and rich resources, China had a chance to survive through a determined and persistent resistance, and he should have waited for a change in the international situation. Instead, he focused on the temporary disparity between China and Japan and decided that it was almost impossible for China to defeat Japan. In his vision, there were only two possible endings for China: to sacrifice or to surrender. Therefore, he decided to prevent the sacrifice of the nation with his personal sacrifice. A first-class politician must not only have his own ethic of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) but must also maintain a “reflective equilibrium” between faith and reality, which is the modern politician’s ethic of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik). The ethic of conviction guarantees only a legitimate motivation and leaves the results with the God, which is in stark contrast with the ethic of responsibility, especially in a time of nihilism. When the support for a certain value is absent, it becomes extremely difficult and dangerous for a politician to make a choice. In the quandary of the Sino-Japanese War, Wang Jingwei 11. Cao Juren, “Nanshe” 南社 [South Society], in Cao Juren Sanwen Xuanji 曹聚仁散文選集, ed. Yun Weili (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2004), 10. 12. Li, Jingxuan, 21.
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was faced with the choice between resistance and compromise, a crucial test to his political maturity. The ethic of conviction requires the politician to focus on the overall interest of the nation as his ultimate end, whereas the ethic of responsibility demands a proper judgment of the historical trend that would lead to the end of the war. Because of his nihilism, Wang Jingwei was not committed to nationalism, neither did he correctly judge the historical situation. He participated in politics with his poetic aesthetic. His gesture might seem lofty but it in fact lacked political conviction and responsibility. Chen Gongbo and others around Wang Jingwei repeatedly attempted to dissuade him from going to Japan for a peace talk. They asked, “How would you face the people after you have done this?” Wang Jingwei replied with indignation, “I am going to Japan for the nation and the people. How could it become a problem for me to face the people? In such a time when the nation is declining, one should not consider personal fame and status.”13 In his remarks, he conflated his own individual will with the will of the people. When he desperately realized that there was no hope for China to defeat Japan and that people were suffering in the midst of the war, his passion for martyrdom burst out. He was determined to sacrifice himself as he had done in the late Qing to save the Chinese people. Wang Jingwei named himself after the legendary bird Jingwei, who is determined to fill up the Eastern Sea by continuously dropping pebbles into it. Wang Jingwei had Jingwei’s determination but not its patience. This intellectual revolutionary had demonstrated his unique charm in his writing and eloquent lectures. Nonetheless, he felt powerless when confronted with intricate politics and could only stick to the discourse of sacrifice. One of his favorite excerpts was “All sacrifices ask for no compensation. When there is any kind of compensation, it should not be called sacrifice. I’m over fifty now. I’m determined to be the sacrifice.”14 Hu Shi well understood that mind-set and commented, “Jingwei was famous for his determination to be a martyr. Throughout his lifetime, he was troubled by such a ‘martyr complex,’ which led him to believe that as long as he had the will to sacrifice, he could do anything without making mistakes. ‘I don’t even care about my own life, how could you not believe me?’ It seemed to me he often thought in this way.”15 Based on his self-defined volitionism, Wang believed he made the right choice and was even moved by his own vision of sacrifice. As an intellectual from a declining traditional literati family, he was once marginalized by drastic social change but managed to come back to the center through the means of radical revolution. The sense of loss and disengagement compelled him to find an anchoring force that would help him to form an identity. Wang’s transformation sheds light on his generation caught between the breakdown of literati value and modern revolutionary ideals. Like Wang Jingwei, wandering scholars of his time were at once alienated from their local roots and from the newly rising urban bourgeoisie and became a rootless generation longing for an anchoring force. In fact, many collaborators with the Japanese under Wang’s regime belonged to this category. They were discontented with the oppressive upper class and were fearful
13. Cao Gongbo, “Zibaishu” 自白書 [My confession], in Shenxun Wangwei Hanjian Bilu, ed. Nanjingshi Dang’anguan (Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2004), 12. 14. Chen Gongbo, Kuxiaolu 苦笑錄 [Bitter laughter] (Beijing: Xiandai shiliao biankanshe, 1981), 231. 15. Xiahou Xuwu, Gao Zongwu yinju huashengdun yishi 高宗武隱居華盛頓遺事 [Accounts of Gao Zongwu’s reclusion in Washington] (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008), 99.
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of the populist movements of the lower class. As Li Zhiyu has illustrated, Wang Jingwei represents a personality typical of the declining literati in a semifeudal society. They tended to define “China” from a cultural perspective rather than a perspective of territory or sovereignty. They believed in the life force of Chinese culture and its power of influencing other cultures. Based on their historical experience, even if China was occupied by a foreign people, as long as the fundamental social structure remained the same, the basic bureaucratic system formed by scholar-officials would not be destroyed and the traditional culture could be maintained. As long as the conqueror remained floating above the bureaucratic system, it would not harm the interests of Chinese culture and the scholar-official class. . . . Many Chinese intellectuals who remained in Beijing during the Japanese occupation period talked about Chinese culture enthusiastically, which manifested their belief in “cultural China.”16
Driven by his revolutionary passion, Wang Jingwei started his legendary journey as an intellectual assassin. He was helplessly obsessed with self-sacrifice and believed that such redemptive sacrifice could save his compatriots from their suffering and establish himself as a revolutionary sage. However, this powerful intellectual politician was a nihilist after all. Despite his quasi-religious passion for sacrifice, he did not have a firm conviction in any value. More importantly, he did not have the proper sense of reality and political responsibility necessary for a politician. His poetic passion eventually led to his failure. In the era of nihilism when the traditional Chinese value system was disintegrating, an intellectual politician without an ethic of responsibility could only fulfil an individual “self-willed sacrifice.” Wang constructed his self on behalf of the nation. Similarly, his political ideal of a revolutionary utopia could not be conceived without asserting his own subjectivity. It was exactly the same characteristic that made Wang Jingwei a revolutionary at the beginning and a “traitor” at the end.
Bibliography Cao Gongbo. “Zibai shu” 自白書 [My confession]. In Shenxun Wangwei Hanjian Bilu. Edited by Nanjingshi Dang’anguan. Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2004. Cao Juren. “Nanshe” 南社 [South Society]. In Cao Juren Sanwen Xuanji 曹聚仁散文選集, edited by Yun Weili. Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2004. Chen Gongbo. Kuxiao lu 苦笑錄 [Bitter laughter]. Beijing: Xiandai shiliao biankanshe, 1981. Du, Yanquan. Du Yaquan Wencun 杜亞泉文存 [The works of Du Yaquan]. Shanghai: Jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003. Hu Hanmin. Hu Hanmin zizhuan 胡漢民自傳 [The autobiography of Hu Hanmin]. Taipei: Zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1982. Li, Zhiyu. Jingxian: Wang Jingwei de zhengzhi shengya 驚弦:汪精衛的政治生涯 [The twang of bowstrings: The political career of Wang Jingwei]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2014. Liu Yazi. “Guanyu ‘jinian nanshe’: Gei Cao Juren xiansheng de gongkaixin” 關於《紀念南 社》:給曹聚仁先生的公開信 [A letter to Mr. Cao Juren regarding his “In Memory of the South Society,” February 13, 1936]. In Liu Yazi Xuanji 柳亞子選集 [Selected works of Liu Yazi]. Edited by Wang Jingyao, Wang Zhuang, and Sun Caixia. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1998. Wang Jingwei. Poems of Wang Ching-wei. Translated by Seyuan Shu. London: Shenval Press, 1938. ———. Wang Wei Shi Hanjian. Edited by Huang Meizhen. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1986. ———. “Xinhai yuzhong shuhuai” 辛亥獄中述懷 [My mind laid bare]. In Wang Jingwei quanji, vol. 2 汪精衛全集,第二卷. Shanghai: Sanmin gongsi, 1929. 16. Li, Jingxuan, 133–34.
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———. “Zishu” 自述 [“An account of myself”]. Eastern Miscellany 31, no. 1 (1934). Xiahou Xuwu. Gao Zongwu yinju huashengdun yishi 高宗武隱居華盛頓遺事 [Accounts of Gao Zongwu’s reclusion in Washington]. Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 2008. Yuan Sun. Luxiya xuwudang 露西亞虛無黨 [Russian nihilists]. In Xinhai Geming Qianshinianjian Lunxuanji, vol. 1. Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 1960.
5
The World in Common Utopian or Cosmopolitan? A Remark on the Political Thought of Xiong Shili
Huang Kuan-Min
Xiong Shili (1885–1968) is recognized as a systematic philosopher thanks to his work A New Treatise of Consciousness-Only (Xin weishi lun) and is followed by disciples such as Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan, and Xu Fuguan. His life spans three historical periods (Qing dynasty, Republic, Communist) and reflects the deep influences of his times. The doctrine of outer kingliness (waiwang 外王), composed in the context of these times, is of crucial importance to understand Xiong’s intellectual transition through the 1949 crisis. More specifically, Xiong’s detailed elaboration on outer kingliness coincided with the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the rise of the Mao cult. This raises a dilemma: Should we regard this change as political conformity to Mao, or should we take it as a utopian yearning aroused by the founding of a new regime (as Liang Shuming claimed when criticizing him)?1 Critics have faulted Xiong for his move to eulogize the “outer kingliness” of Mao after the founding of PRC and have regarded this as a betrayal of his earlier Confucian commitment.2 My aim in this chapter is to explore the political implications of Xiong’s political thought, in particular his conception of “outer kingliness.” Does it provide any new perspective on Confucian utopianism? Indeed, it does. This chapter looks beyond previous interpretations that emphasize cultural conservatism and political nationalism to show that a cosmopolitan dimension can be identified in the utopian concern of this political ideal.
The Conceptual Difference: Utopia and Cosmopolitanism “Utopia,” a combination of the Latin prefix u- and the Greek stem -topos, meaning no-place or nowhere, is an invention of Thomas More, used to translate nusquama. By its pronunciation, eu-topia, it may also imply a beautiful place.3 The ambiguity of the term 1. Liang Shuming, Remembering Xiong Shili [Yi Xiong Shili xiansheng] (Taipei: Mingwen Books, 1989), 27. 2. Chak Chi-shing, A Historical Study on Contemporary New Confucianism [Dangdai xingruxue shilun] (Taipei: Yun-Chen Press, 1993), 281. 3. See “Six Lines on the Island of Utopia written by Anemolius,” in “Ancillary Materials from Other Early Editions of Utopia,” in Thomas More, Utopia, ed. George M. Logan and Robert T. Adams (Cambridge:
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corresponds to a two-sided meaning: on the positive side, the word “utopia” denotes the imagination of a society more just, more friendly, and more liberal; on the negative side, it means a project that is constrained, totalitarian, absurd, and insincere.4 The positive side reveals the critical significance derived from a society with faults. Longing for a better or even the best possible society exists always in the minds of all people. The more unequal and repressed a society, the greater the hope there is for utopia. The negative side seems connected to the imaginary side, since the greater the hope there is for the ideal society, the more disappointing the simulacrum of real society can be. Thus, the striving for utopia can lead easily to its opposite, dystopia. The nature of the concept of utopia is political. Although utopia, as a project to create an ideal human society, is distant from or even contrary to reality, it is quite different from any religious concept of otherworldly space.5 Plato’s Republic has become a prototype for the ideal city, which derives from philosophical knowledge instead of religious faith. In the Chinese context, traces of utopianism can be found both in Confucian and Daoist thought. Xiong surely follows the Confucian tradition, while Laozi’s idea of a “small state with [a] small population” (xiaoguo guamin)6 and Zhuangzi’s description of a “country of nothing” (wuheyou zhi xiang) still leave their influence on Chinese minds, but the best example of utopianism is the Peach Blossom Spring7 of Tao Yuanming. The Utopia of Thomas More, as Howard Segal points out, relies on improving scientific knowledge,8 standing in diametrical opposition to concepts in political theology such as Augustine’s City of God. The connection between political project and technological control is apparent in utopian socialism (Saint-Simon) or communism (Marx or the Soviet Union).9 Relying on this progressive optimism, utopists do not fashion a happier country somewhere unknown and beyond; their dreams are rooted in this world, here and now.10 Utopia’s only real distinction lies in its distance from reality For example, Karl Mannheim equates utopia with ideology by declaring utopian consciousness a state of mind “incongruous with the state of reality within which it occurs,” particularly when the “orientations transcending reality . . . pass over into conduct, tending to shatter, either partially or wholly, the order of things prevailing at the time.”11 Utopia’s inherent incongruence tends to “burst the bonds of the existing order,” so that the utopian idea is “confined to a world beyond history and society, where they could not affect the status quo.”12 On the contrary, ideologies “relate mainly to dominant groups” and “are directed toward the past and so are stricken by obsolescence, whereas utopias Cambridge University Press, 2003), 117. Utopia, besides meaning “nowhere,” has no reference to any time (udetopia); on this and the fictional names as Hythoday or Anemolius, see Miguel Abensur, L’utopie de Thomas More à Walter Benjamin (Paris: Sens et Tonka, 2009), 34–35. 4. Thierry Paquot, Utopies et utopistes (Paris: La Découverte, 2007), 9. 5. Howard P. Segal, Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 10. 6. Koon-ki T. Ho, “Several Thousand Years in Search of Happiness: The Utopian Tradition in China,” Oriens Extremus 30 (1983): 23. 7. Ibid., 29. 8. Segal, Utopias, 48–49. 9. Ibid., 52, 200. 10. Ibid., 12–13. 11. Karl Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985), 169; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harvest Book, 1936), 192. 12. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 169, 193.
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have a futuristic element.”13 Mannheim also creates a typology of utopia: chiliastic, liberal-humanitarian, conservative, and socialist-communist. The conservative’s utopia is a reactive mentality, for its idea becomes visible only belatedly (nachträglich),14 when threatened. Counterutopia (Gegenutopie),15 or dystopia, is seen as a conservative counterpart to utopia. Hegel belongs to this conservative utopia: in a Hegelian consciousness of history, the value of the past appears in and determines the present. Inherent is a time series containing four types, of which the last, the “contemporary situation,” shows us “a gradual descent and a closer approximation to the real life of a utopia that at one time completely transcended history.”16 But, as Ricoeur skeptically argues, this approximation to real life contradicts fact:17 this utopian distance from reality was not acknowledged even the era that followed the Second World War and Cold War. However, there is a rebirth of utopia in the twenty-first century. As for communism, Ricoeur accepts merely that young Marx is more of a utopist, as Georg Lukács affirms, whereas Marxism itself belongs to ideology.18 Not only can the content of utopia be classified as representative of a political position, but utopian writing as a genre can also correspond to the rhetorical strategy of keeping a distance from reality for self-protection. Abensur, by borrowing Leo Strauss’s discovered relationship between persecution and writing, examines the rhetorics of ductus obliquus in More’s Utopia used to conceal the author’s real intention.19 More uses stories and indirect forms of narration, significant methods that had traditionally been used since the times of Isocrates, Cicero, and Quintilian, without limiting the philosophical argumentation in his writing. This style requires the readers to interpret in different ways, because More is conscious of the conflict between knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa). Only the indirect way of ductus obliquus can lead readers to abandon preestablished ideologies.20 To recognize the real problems with reality, one cannot help but create distance from reality, which is the intention of utopia. In contrast to the distinction between ideology and utopia, concerning their distance from reality, cosmopolitanism works another topological shift: from the local to the world. The term “cosmopolitan,” composed of cosmos and politis, is ambiguous; a citizen (politis) is bound to a determinate organization while the world has no concrete boundary. Diogenes the Cynic refused to define himself by way of his territory of birth and replaced it with a universal concern and hope. But it is only through the extension of Hellenistic culture beyond Greece that the Stoics gave cosmopolitanism a political meaning by reaching a larger community than the Greek cities.21 According to Nussbaum, the Stoics conceptualized a community that extended outside their local communities of birth. The citizens of a world state, they argued, should give their first 13. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 273. 14. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 200; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 231. 15. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 199; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 230. 16. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 213; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 248. 17. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 280. 18. Ibid., 69, 284. 19. Abensur, L’utopie de Thomas More à Walter Benjamin, 35; Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 35. 20. Ibid., 53. 21. Gerard Delanty, The Cosmopolitan Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 21; James D. Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 28.
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allegiance “to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral community made up by the humanity of all human beings.”22 Under the contrast of world and local region, the Stoics did not need to give up their own local identifications but only needed to remind us of the concomitant circles that surround us: self, family, neighbor, state, country, and humanity. The cosmopolitan task is to “draw the circles toward the center . . . making all human beings more like our fellow city-dwellers.”23 Nussbaum presupposes all kinds of difference (racial, cultural, historical, etc.) but recognizes a pedagogical aim aroused by “the vivid imagination of the different” to “conceive of the entire world of human beings as a single body.”24 The maxim of Marcus Aurelius, for example, comes to grips with “the cultures of remote and initially strange civilizations.” This Stoic origin of cosmopolitanism insists on a universalist perspective: creating a whole body of diverse human beings and cities without excluding different people of any kind. Kant gives a modern version of cosmopolitanism. In supposing a “universal history” for “rational cosmopolitans” who “act in accordance with integral, prearranged plans,”25 Kant holds out hope for the union of all republican nations. It seems that all individuals among the human species act as if they share a common historical process guided by the same ideas that connect action and history. Without real support for this political body, this hope resorts to a concept of nature: “The highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence, will at last be realized as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop.”26 Kant uses the cosmopolitan idea to replace “chiliastic expectations,” a type that Mannheim takes as a utopian mentality.27 The historical program is quite different. Another more influential concept is the cosmopolitan right described in the “Third Definitive Article of a Perpetual Peace,” which notes the right of hospitality of a stranger arriving in someone else’s territory. This stranger claims not the right of guest but the right of resort, which means that the stranger in a foreign country has no right to become a member of the country but does have a right “to communal possession of the earth’s surface.”28 Under the idea of cosmopolitan right, Kant discards the possibility of the international state (civitas gentium) but aims at establishing a federation of free states under a republican constitution.29 This type of cosmopolitanism does not sacrifice the existence of the nation-state; on the contrary, it starts from premise of individual freedom on the basis of moral autonomy and deduces, in an analogous way, sovereignty as freedom of the state. This Kantian form of cosmopolitanism has had a strong influence on recent times, especially for the Western world and its two disastrous wars of the twentieth century. As a consequence, we have seen the foundation of United Nations. But within the confines of the nation-state we encounter more challenges in the age of globalization. 22. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” in For Love of Country?, by Martha C. Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 7. 23. Ibid., 9. 24. Ibid.,10. 25. Immanuel Kant, “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltgürglicher Absicht,” in Kants Werke: Akademie Textausgabe (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968), 8:17. Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 41. 26. Kant, Kants Werke, 8:28; Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, 51. 27. Kant, Kants Werke, 8:27; Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, 50; Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 189, 216. 28. Kant, Kants Werke, 8:357–58; Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, 105–6. 29. Kant, Kants Werke, 8:354; Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, 102.
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Not only did the mechanism of a federation of nations create difficulties in resolving conflicts across national boundaries, but it also fell victim to the manipulations of the great powers during the Cold War period and later because of the inequality among nations that manifested through postcapitalist and neo-imperial development. Despite these facts, more and more global tendencies encourage the modification of boundaries, such as internet connections, economic and financial crises, distributions of superviruses in medical domains, and climate change, to name a few. The concept of the global village requires us to consider the new opportunity and obligation that the cosmopolitan perspective offers. Refraining from confusing the phenomenon of globalization with the requisites of the cosmopolitan, Ulrich Beck suggests a distinction between cosmopolitanism and “cosmopolitanization,” according to which a two-directional movement of denationalization and renationalization formulates the reflexivity of cosmopolitan society.30 The opposition between national boundary and transnational interaction animates the whole debate. The same problem reappears in a controversy over the tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism raised by Martha Nussbaum. One response is the concept of “cosmopolitan patriots” proposed by Kwame Appiah.31 There could be a noncontradictory position from which to conceptualize cosmopolitanism that is conscious of a network larger than that of the nation-state—such as humanity as a whole—without negating patriotism. Beck’s view reflects also a contemporary condition in which the human species faces a global threat (medical, environmental, or financial) and demands a solution that surpasses national boundaries. Outside the realm of social projects, cosmopolitan universalism leads to political considerations, such as Gerard Delanty’s emphasis on Kantian critical function or James Ingram’s profound development of cosmopolitics.32 The democratic universalist claim is central to this type of cosmopolitanism; this claim, Louis Lourme suggests, contains the following main goals: control of the use of force, cultural diversity, self-determination of peoples, follow-up on interior affairs, and participatory management of global problems.33 Lourme also lists six principles in cosmopolitanism: equal dignity, individuation, participation, subsidiarity and supply, diversity, and obligation.34 Cosmopolitan politics is tightly connected to ethics, focusing on the common conditions of human coexistence and the nonexclusion of differences. With this conceptual difference between utopian and cosmopolitan ideas in mind, we can turn to an analysis of the ethical and political discourse of Xiong Shili. Utopia provides an ideal order different from or even contrary to the actual order, be it political, economic, or cultural. We intend it to achieve realization, but it ends in pure imagination without the possibility of realization. Cosmopolitanism is founded on universalism in contrast to particularism (whether considering territory or history or both) and considers the whole human species. However, a rhetorical analysis of its discourse does not exclude the importance of imagination. Paul Ricoeur includes ideology and utopia in
30. Ulrich Beck, “The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000), 98. Cf. Louis Lourme, Qu’est-ce que le cosmopolitisme (Paris: Vrin, 2012), 32. 31. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (1997), 617–39. 32. Delanty, The Cosmopolitan Imagination; Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics, 204–5. 33. Lourme, Qu’est-ce que le cosmopolitisme?, 50. 34. Ibid., 22.
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the social imaginary. Delanty tends to describe his idea as cosmopolitan imagination.35 This imaginary may cause theoretical and practical effects in ethics and politics.
The Cosmopolitan Potential in Difference within the Utopian Moment In his work An Inquiry into Confucianism (Yuan Ru, 1956),36 Xiong Shili defines the key concepts of Confucianism in three chapters: “Inquiry on the Tradition of Learning,” “Inquiry on Outer Kingliness,” and “Inquiry on Inner Sageliness.” For him, the doctrine of outer kingliness is based on the Four Classics, that is, the Book of Changes, the Spring and Autumn Annals, the “Carrier of Rites” (“Li Yun” in the Book of Rites), and the Rites of Zhou. In this context, Xiong’s writing strategy appears to have begun with his distinction between the authenticity of the six classics;37 by recognizing Confucius as their author, Xiong can then claim that the falsity of the classics derives from the interventions of compilers or editors in later times who commit the error of unfaithfulness to the original sense of the texts. From the perspective of critical and historical methods, Xiong’s strategy can be criticized for his ignorance of evidence, interpretations, and historical facts, but it nonetheless represents a personal philosophical view. In fact, the term “inquiry” in his book title, An Inquiry into Confucianism, is not wholly conformed to the meaning that Xiong intended in his original Chinese title, which could also be rendered as “retracing to the origin of Confucianism” or “original Confucianism.” Indeed, the term yuan 原 in the title Yuan Ru (原儒) conveys “origin” in a substantive sense and “retracing to the origin” or “originating” in a verbal sense. Where then is the origin of Confucianism? Literally and philosophically, this “origin” lies in the person of Confucius. Far from being a simple tautology, by assuming the authority of Confucius as author, Xiong locates the position of assimilating the authority of the classics in the authority of Confucius. In short, the reliability of the classics lies in the messages transmitted: by refuting the authenticity of certain parts of the classics, some messages are thus refused. How can a reader decide the criteria of authenticity? In Xiong’s eyes, the criteria reside in the authorship of Confucius, so far as the inner coherence of the classics exists in the structure of Confucius’s thought. Xiong aims to reveal two types of coherence by affirming a genealogy of learning. Here occurs a hermeneutical circle. Xiong, in The Evolution of the Cosmos (Qian kun yen, 1961), emphasizes the distinction of the Grand Way (Da dao) and modest well-being (xiaokang, also rendered as small welfare) in the “Carrier of Rites,”38 a view that corresponds with the pursuit of authenticity.39 Despite the hermeneutical question involved in the truth of classics, there is still a question concerning the politics of truth, or the ways in which philosophical truth are revealed or concealed in a polity because of the tension between truth and politics.40
35. Delanty, The Cosmopolitan Imagination. 36. Cf. alternative title translation as “Tracing Confucianism” in John Makeham, “The New Daotong,” in New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, ed. John Makeham (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 67. 37. Xiong Shili, An Inquiry into Confucianism [Yuan Ru], in The Complete Works of Xiong Shili (Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 6:327–29. 38. Umberto Brensciani, Reinventing Confucianism (Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, 2001), 134. 39. Xiong Shili, The Evolution of the Cosmos [Qian kun yan], in Complete Works, 7:335–36. 40. Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1959, repr. 1973), 68.
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Even without claiming historical truth, Xiong is nonetheless concerned with political truth. In Book 1 of Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics (Dujing shiyao, 1945), Xiong qualifies the three propositions in The Great Learning—“regulation of the family,” “government of the kingdom,” and “making the whole kingdom peaceful”—as parts of outer kingliness.41 In Book 3, saying that “the Way of Confucius is outer kingliness and inner sageliness, which is contained in the Book of Changes and the Spring and Autumn Annals,” Xiong is not limited to the topic and subdivision mentioned in the Great Leaning but rather develops a particular perspective that “Confucius, as the author of the Spring and Autumn Annals, sees himself as an unadorned king (su wang).”42 In this context, the meaning of outer kingliness has in fact been slightly modified: “The Spring and Autumn Annals speaks of kingliness, in a double sense: one is to reveal the way of benevolence (rendao) in the name of King Wen, another is that Confucius sees himself as the unadorned king, instituting the laws for all ages (wanshi, literally “ten thousands generations”). In the second sense, Confucius expresses his own volition under the name of the King Wen.”43 The term “unadorned king,” which comes from The Stories from the Family of Confucius (Kongzi jiayu) and was used by Dong Zhongshu, means kingly governing without formal authority. The unadorned king reveals in his behavior the idea of outer kingliness, bearing the name of king by endorsing political reform. Political truth lies in the intention to institute laws and norms for all generations past and for all generations to come. Xiong’s usage of the term “unadorned king” means something quite distinct: “It was then Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals and instituted the laws for all ages, and then strove to reform the disordered institutions in the age of monarchical sovereignty. That’s why he sighs “for those who know me and condemn me.”44 Another layer of metaphorical analogy expresses Xiong’s Confucian political expectation in his doctrine of outer kingliness. This expectation is far from Xiong’s personal dream, and in fact it may reflect the real political crisis that Xiong personally encountered. The revolutionary Xiong, having participated in the anti-Manchu struggle during his youth, was not satisfied with the republican regime established by Sun Yat-sen. He often shifted from his readings of the classics and Chinese history to those that addressed the contemporary situations of his times. Since the revolution of 1911 both banished the Manchu authority and subverted the rule of the emperor imposed on China for more than 2,000 years, the first objective of the doctrine of outer kingliness in the eyes of Xiong is to substitute the significance of “king” to avoid an imperial order in modern times. Consequently, “king” or “kingly ruling” does not mean a monarchical ruling authority or sovereignty; on the contrary, it means the political aim “to banish the Son of Heaven, to repress the princes, and to denounce the ministers of state, meaning no space for the ruling class [so] all the people can gain self-government, freedom, and
41. 42. 43. 44.
Xiong Shili, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics” [Dujing shiyao], in Complete Works, 3:672. Ibid., 1012. Ibid., 1013. Ibid. The expression “those who know me and condemn me” comes from a paragraph of Mencius: “Confucius said, ‘Yes! It is the Spring and Autumn which will make men know me, and it is the Spring and Autumn which will make men condemn me.’” James Legge, The Works of Mencius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 281–82.
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self-respect, so [they] then can achieve the ultimate peace.”45 By engaging in a critical interpretation of the concept of kingliness, Xiong reasons that the imperial institution from the Han to Manchu dynasty is not permissible according to the esprit of the Spring and Autumn Annals. The difference does not reside in the declaration of whether king or emperor is better justified but in the content of kingly rule, whose aim is perpetual peace. Xiong repeats his hermeneutical strategy by rendering a metonymy of king: The majestic declaration of the ruler is called king. King (wang), [etymologically meaning] to follow, means that the world (i.e., territory under the sky, tianxia) is subordinate to him. The king educates the people with justice, aiming for peace and placing responsibility on himself.46 君人者之大號,曰王。王者,往也,言為天下所歸往。《春秋》化民以義,馴致太平,責重 領導。
The justification of “king” by way of “following/subordination” in Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics in 1945 is the principle behind Xiong’s understanding of kingliness as it appears later in An Inquiry into Confucianism and The Evolution of the Cosmos. Here, kingly rule is closely related to peacemaking. The key function is “governance through edification” (治化); that is, education under a just ruling order. The meaning of “first year” emphasized in Spring and Autumn Annals offers a sense of political beginning or initiation47 (in the sense of Hannah Arendt)48 in implying an ideal of ruling by the virtues: The origin of ruling transformation lies in the self-moderation of desire and the selfrepression of selfishness, so as to restore the inherent substance of humaneness [renti]. Only thereafter could there be the joy of union with everything under the sky and on earth for every person and hereafter mutual respect and cooperation in order to produce equal security for mutual living and nourishment. That’s why Spring and Autumn Annals emphasizes the beginning in order to establish the royal perfection (huangji)49 of the kingly way.50
Xiong’s view is undoubtedly rooted in the Confucian tradition, according to which the kingly way establishes political order on the basis of moral order. Ideas such as “repression of selfishness,” “cooperation,” “living and nourishing,” and “equal security” relate to the core principle of humaneness. The most important thing to do to initiate a political order is to structure a world order in accord with the principle of humaneness by proclaiming “union with every thing under the sky and on earth” as the basic model of the state, according to Wang Yangming’s definition of the “great man.”51 Xiong extends this moral metaphysical foundation of union to justify the political expectations of the 45. Xiong, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 1015. 46. Ibid., 1035. 47. In regard to the significance of the “beginning” in the Gongyang school commentaries on the first sentence in the Spring and Autumn Annals—“It was the [Duke Yin’s] first year, the spring, the king’s first month”—see James Legge, “Prolegomena,” in The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen (London: Henry Frowde, 1872), Appendix 1, 54–55. 48. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 59, 91. 49. The term “royal perfection” is seen in the Book of History [Shangshu]; see, for example, James Legge, The Shoo King, or The Book of Historical Documents (London: Henry Frowde, 1865), 324. 50. Xiong, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 1031. 51. The source is Cheng Hao, who says, “The benevolent person considers heaven, earth, and all nature as an all-pervading unity.” Cited in “Instructions for Practical Life,” in The Philosophy of Wang Yang-Ming, trans. Frederick G. Henke (New York: Open Court, 1916), 106. The discourse of Wang Yangming is present in
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public world (gong tianxia). Thus, whatever form was assumed by governance, or even the revolution against the imperial institution, claims vis-à-vis the government, liberty, and democracy of the people do not belong to the discourse of state sovereignty. The ultimate concern here is the legitimacy of governing. The Confucian kingly way stated in such ideas as peacemaking or union with everything in the world inspires us to consider the problem of utopia and cosmopolitanism. Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics proposes a historical differentiation on the basis of the principle of humaneness by intermingling readings in the Book of Changes with the Gongyang commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals. The two classics converge on the idea of an age of peace as the ultimate aim of history: from the Book of Changes, the aim of human society and history will find its perfection, in that everything is in its right place and ends without a ruling leader; from the Spring and Autumn Annals, history is divided into three ages, the age of chaos, the age of prosperity and temporary peace, and the age of perpetual peace. The principle of governing will attain a moral body politic that unfolds along the historical time line. In its ideal form, this polity allows everything to be in its proper place: under ethical universality, there is the particularity of individuals in juxtaposition to their particular historical situation. Deduced from the ideal of union with everything in the world, ethical universality offers a guideline for developing Confucian cosmopolitanism. In spite of the division of historical ages, Xiong’s own interpretations of the three ages neither correspond to historical periods nor aim at historical explanation. The original intention behind compiling the Spring and Autumn Annals is morally critical because the utopian polity, whose historical teleology is oriented toward the ultimate goal of perpetual peace, relies upon a moral foundation of good politics. This reading assumes background knowledge of the “Carrier of Rites and the Great Unity” (“Liyun datong”) in the Book of Rites. Xiong also criticizes the traditional interpretation of the three ages transmitted by He Xiu or even Gongyang Shou and Hu Musheng (based on the relations of grace and responsibility between the king and his ministers). In short, behind the historical critics stand the moral critics who argue for principle on the basis of the people in order to overturn the oppression of ruling class. Xiong carefully explains the three stages of historical development in accord with a revised perspective of history founded on humaneness. The first stage, the chaotic age, is the time when all nations govern their interior politics without avoiding wars and invasions. The second stage, the age of establishing legitimate regimes, applies the principle of “unifying Sinitic peoples and repelling foreign tribes” (hezhu Xia ju yidi 合諸夏據夷狄) as a means to resist invasion by developing diplomatic relationships. Some nuances to underscore: (1) the encouragement of Sinitic peoples to maintain hegemony in order to repel foreign incursions, (2) the punishment of war criminals, (3) the encouragement of foreign peoples who admire Sinitic rite and justice and their similar treatment of Sinitic peoples, and (4) the blame of weak peoples who lose their independence.52 Because of the suffering he endured as a result of the weakness of Chinese nation-state, Xiong elaborates a nationalist thematic in his analysis of Chinese history.
his “Letter to Ku Tung-ch’iao” concerning the sage, in which he writes, “The mind of the sage considers heaven, earth, and all things as one substance” (327). 52. Ibid., 1075.
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But a problem develops when Xiong adopts a traditional and uncritical discourse. The scope of this China is immense: the warlike people of the western frontiers (a.k.a., Central Asia) are connected to India, while the southern barbarians envelop the Malay Archipelago.53 The terms used to designate foreign people (rong, man, yi, di 戎蠻夷狄, all of which still often translate as “barbarian/foreigner”) are established in the historical imagination but tend to lack geographical and anthropological specificity. The typical attitude of Sinocentrism is revealed in Xiong’s designation of people who did not worship rites and justice as yidi. The strategy of defending the nation-state may justify resistance insofar as national independence, self-determination, and assimilation exist as requisite elements. Despite this morally critical position, the problem of self-contradiction in principle will be raised whenever Xiong creates a Sino-barbarian distinction before first understanding the culture of the foreign people in question. Xiong’s attitude reflects his cultural conservatism. Adopting the terminology of Karl Mannheim, the doctrine of barbarian identity (yidi) cannot meet reality, since a nonactual false consciousness exists in the geographical imagination and historical explanation created by the monarchical regime. The designation of barbarians points to a dystopian understanding of reality, but it can project circuitously a utopian wish over the long haul. Could there be space in a cosmopolitan view for the hope of perpetual peace (in the third age), instead of involving an ethnic differentiation caught by a form of utopian nationalism (in the second age)? There is a possible way to modify the rigid division of three ages, as Xiong tries to complement the historical stages with the spirit of becoming inspired by the Ko hexagram (meaning revolution) and Ting hexagram (new beginning) in the Book of Changes.54 The doctrine of the three ages is elastic: “The significance of three ages is that, to govern well, [one] is required to remove the old and obtain the new. When an institution lasts too long, it cannot adapt itself to changes, so it is better to change in accord with the times. . . . The three ages are common to infinite changes in all generations; to simplify the changes into three ages is only a temporary convenience.”55 The critics of Xiong regarding history are founded on the ideas of temporality that derive from Wang Fuzhi’s Theory of Ages in the Spring and Autumn Annals: “The best way is to govern the times; the second best is to follow the times; the worst is against the times.” For the Second World War, Xiong offers his own diagnostic: The strong military powers like to compete. If there could be someone who can repress the invasion on account of humaneness and justice, he has reverence for the Beginning and can govern time. . . . Now, the World War is caused by the invaders, who use authoritarianism in order to gauge the people; this war is the disaster of human beings’ self-destruction. Now the invaders fail, and liberalism will replace authoritarianism. Those who have the vision can detect the tendency to conduct the vision and will obtain the advantage.56
Here, Xiong presents water flow as the dominant metaphor for time. When the first wave (authoritarian) fails, the second wave (liberalist) will follow, just as one age follows another older age. But the key importance in using the doctrine of the three ages lies in the justification of the evolution from monarchic to democratic regimes. Xiong’s 53. 54. 55. 56.
Ibid., 1070. James Legge, The I Ching, or The Book of Changes (New York: Dover, 1899, repr. 1963), 167–71. Xiong, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 1040–41. Ibid., 1045.
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political imagination is attached to this doctrine. The chaotic age suits the monarchical order, so a king is required to lead the ordinary people. But the second age cannot directly relinquish its king or emperor, because not everyone acts as a superior person. The king retains his title so that the people possess their right to self-governance. In this context, Xiong praises the queen of England, as Britain’s titular head of state, for accomplishing the ideal of the Spring and Autumn Annals. There is still vagueness in his judgment of time, that is, whether the queen of England governed in the age of legitimate rule. On the one hand, Xiong constantly creates a contrast between the regime of military power and the regime of the kingly way; he consents to the necessity to utilize a regime of military power in order to attain hegemony by the Sinitic people over the “uncivilized barbarians.” On the other hand, Xiong affirms that the poverty of this military regime led to the tyranny of foreign occupiers and native vagabonds who ruled China for more than 2,000 years. The moral position of kingly rule led Xiong to declare the extension of the meaning of “Sinitic” to include that of “civilization.” In other words, “Sino” means “civilized”: The tyranny of Qin in our country in the past, Hitler in Germany nowadays: . . . they are all wild barbarians. . . . All the nations in the world that exalt rites and justice shall unify together, to name themselves the Sinitic (civil) peoples (zhuxia 諸夏). They shall strive together to hold onto military hegemony (baquan 霸權) in order to rule the wild barbarians and to transform them by means of rites and justice, leading finally to universal peace. This is the secret meaning of instituting the laws for ten thousands of generations in the Spring and Autumn Annals.57
The curiosity aroused in this paragraph is the vicissitude of meanings contained in the word “Sinitic” (Xia), which seems go so far as to shift to another layer: “Sinitic” means “Chinese” no longer as a geographic or ethnic concept but rather as a cultural concept. The multiplicity of Sinitic peoples includes all civilized nations. It is also important for Xiong to underscore the necessity of war. Military hegemony itself is not totally rejected; it is only transformed. Military power must be subordinated to the kingly way of rule. Xiong will not reject violence itself. His implication of just war provides him with a utilitarian mean of violence. A first step toward the age of legitimate rule involves the exercise of power to remove the monarchic regime. A second step is to achieve a civilizational order even by use of war as an instrument. Despite universal peace as an ultimate aim, Xiong seems to be realistic in admitting the existence of conflicts in the real world. War cannot be eradicated simply by invoking the ideal of peace. Xiong’s gesture is defensive rather than offensive, for his immediate enemy is imperialism and colonialism. Using the power of hegemony to rule over the “wild barbarian” is more like using cultural assimilation through the recognition of rites and justice as a means of transformation. Resistance to totalitarianism and barbarianism is rooted in the moral basis of civilizational cultivation. Assimilation thus takes place on the level of civilization for the purpose of perpetual peace. A realistic attitude develops, guided by the utopian ideal of the great unity (datong 大同). It is time to evaluate the universality implied in the idea of extending the sense of civilization. The standard applied to the utopia of the age of peace presupposes a cosmopolitan position. Starting from Wang Yangming’s typically Confucian proposition of “union with everything in the world,” we can understand this apparent optimism in 57. Ibid., 1080.
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a contrarily pessimistic perspective: the crisis of human self-destruction is not limited to the life and death of a singular nation but rather universally involves all nations and ethnicities. Prosperity in accord with the development of rites and justice includes a human being’s attainment of his or her proper place. It can also be extended beyond the limits of humanity to a universal scope: Not only should the human beings on earth not be excluded, [but] if there is [a] certain human being on the planets of Venus or Mars, how could he be excluded from this concern?58
According to this cosmopolitan perspective, the doctrine of the three ages relates to the idea of conserving the three interconnecting threads (cun san tong 存三統),59 for these three threads are of one thread, the thread of humaneness.60 It is on the basis of this humaneness in the sense of union that one can deduce the cosmopolitan attitude: If there is consideration of the idea of union with everything in the world, then the organization of living together and all actions are viewed from that union. For those who do not appropriate their bodies or nation or race, there would be no more limit and division between the classes, between the nations, and between the species. All manifestations of all human species living together are established according to the principle of equality.61
From this perspective, the selfish appropriation of things or nations becomes a public interest. Xiong also often reveals the prospect of erasing specific (racial, ethnic, or national) delineations. A key point is the expression “all human species living together.” The constitution of this living together lies in “community,” as we say today. A contemporary concern in politics is how humanity can live together peacefully without the danger of self-destruction. In this sense, Xiong’s cosmopolitan consciousness meets contemporary demands. However, it goes without saying that the erasure of specific limits or national borders remains a utopian idea. Two comments on the “world in common” (tianxia wei gong 天 下為公) in Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics discuss social welfare organizations such as childcare centers and eldercare homes, and the intention to conserve the nuclear family and minimize private property.62 “Inquiry on Outer Kingliness” in An Inquiry into Confucianism offers a new reading of the “Carrier of Rites” by incorporating ideas in the Rites of Zhou. The axiom is, “To march on the great way requires the abolishment of hegemony. The Modest Welfare of Ritual Education (xiaokang lijiao 小康 禮教) consists in the conservation of class.”63 The characters in the “Carrier of Rites” and the Rites of Zhou make preparation for entering from the age of the legitimate regime into the age of the peaceful regime. The key word from the Rites of Zhou is equality, from which one can deduce commonality. Since all men are equal, nothing is private to a certain person nor possessed by him. Everything belongs to the public welfare. It is not difficult to observe that the principle of equality, central to An Inquiry into Confucianism, 58. Ibid., 618. 59. Makeham, “The New Daotong,” 56. Makeham translates daotong (道統) as “interconnecting thread of the way.” 60. Xiong, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 1049. 61. Ibid., 1051. 62. Ibid., 620–21, 1057–58. 63. Xiong, An Inquiry into Confucianism, in Complete Works, 6:506.
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resonates with the way of governing proposed in Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics, according to a significant nuance that became apparent as a consequence of the Chinese Communist Party’s seizure of power in 1949. That is, the Rites of Zhou seems to offer a useful symbol for imagining a new order. Though regarded as one of the classics of Chinese tradition, the Rites of Zhou represents for Xiong a model of a future age, the age of the legitimate regime, rather than simply a record of Zhou institutions as the title suggests. Xiong sees in this book the institutional potentialities of Confucius’s political thought. According to Xiong’s interpretation, the Rites of Zhou and “Carrier of Rites” share an analogous function: one signifies the end of the chaotic age and the beginning of the age of a legitimate regime, the other the transition from the second age to the final age of peace. In this view, both stages of transition are oriented toward utopian ends. Xiong’s emphasis on equality in the Rites of Zhou created as a side effect the idea of cooperative connection, which represents a communitarian perspective over that of individualistic isolation. In Xiong’s eyes, the political thought of the book is relatively advanced in comparison to the time of Zhou, so that the book is written solely on the pretext of the institution of the Zhou court in order to avoid the jealousy of Confucius’s contemporaries. This rhetorical judgment of the art of writing is not available solely for the interpretation of Confucius’s motive; it can also be applied to Xiong himself. When Xiong points out, “the political proposition of the Rites of Zhou is for the renouncement of monarchic power in order to arrive at the abolishment of the triple levels of ruler (Son of the Sky, princes, ministers of state) and to carry out democracy,” he has no real experience of democracy himself. This reflexive rhetoric working on Xiong will reveal his imagination of democratic politics through the imaginary institution of the future polity. But Xiong’s utopianism seems different from that of Kang Youwei. One can observe that his criticisms of Kang have two layers: the first, more literal, criticizes Kang’s pretention of three ages using the Spring and Autumn Annals without detecting the profound reason in it;64 the second refers to a distinctive project of peace, since he disagrees with the superficial imagination of Kang’s Book of Great Unity (Datong shu 大同書). However, Xiong’s fundamental reason seems to be his revolutionary opposition to monarchical regimes. He was a revolutionary since his youth, whereas Kang is famous for assenting to a monarchical constitution. The details of such a democracy on the basis of Rites of Zhou in An Inquiry into Confucianism reflect Xiong’s political concept of universal and direct election, which integrates the six levels of administration—for example, six rural areas (liu xiang 六鄉) and six levels of neighborhood (liu sui 六遂).65 Xiong stakes his hopes for democracy on this imaginary institution, aiming at transforming the people through his utopian agenda. The mechanism of democracy, on the one hand, will dissolve private desire and elevate humanity to the public realm; on the other hand, it will unify the scattered masses into a solidified group. Xiong longs for communitarian solidarity, by which the people make a mutual connection and prepare for union into a one-world family (“all under heaven are of one family” 天下一家).66 A more concrete expression of this solidarity ideal corresponds with the Communist ideal of the annihilation of private property, except that, in this case, public wealth (such as property, land, and enterprise) 64. Ibid., 396. 65. Ibid., 520–27. 66. Ibid., 528.
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belongs to the nation-state. In addition to this political concept, Xiong also exhibits an optimistic attitude toward science and technology, insofar as he infuses his particular reading of the chapter “Officer of Winter” (冬官) in the Rites of Zhou by discovering its implicit technocracy. His discovery of the advocacy of industrial development in the classical canon is analogous to his reading between lines to discover the ancient assent to democracy. It is more than interesting if one can catch the coincidence of the proposition of annihilating private property with the Communist ideal. One of Xiong’s last books, On Six Canonical Classics (1951), is in the form of a letter to Mao Zedong, utilizing the Rites of Zhou as its main textual reference. The content of On Six Canonical Classics is not so different from that of An Inquiry into Confucianism. But the order of the chapters offers some curious hints; as a sketch of an envisioned political future, the Rites of Zhou seems to respond to the innovation of establishing the Communist nation. It is somewhat difficult to reveal Xiong’s true intention: whether he adopted a subliminal strategy, using utopian rhetoric to avoid political persecution, or consistently adhered to utopian ideals from the beginning to the end of his intellectual life, which took on a particular aspect on the occasion of the new political order. Despite this difficulty, one can still find certain instances of dissonance. Xiong emphasizes that political power shall be in the hands of the people in the form of democracy. Without the collaboration of political democracy that includes economic equality, one stops only halfway in overturning the monarchical power. The institution most suitable for realizing the political ideals Xiong sees in the Rites of Zhou is democratic republicanism, which is not really the same as a communist regime. Xiong’s proposition of federal union has run counter to the imperial system ever since the Qin dynasty.67 His federal union of Chinese nations combines direct democracy and representative democracy in preserving the spirit of economic equality. But what form would the states in this federal union assume? Lacking details, Xiong imagines a federal union of autonomous regions that would accord with the final stage that represents an anarchic ideal as the final status of “dragons without a leader” expressed by Hexagram Qian in the Book of Changes. There occurs another shift of interest. Xiong’s autonomous regions have both political and cultural significance. His source, the ideal expressed in the Rites of Zhou, is more cultural than political. Xiong resorts to the traditional form of the Confucian school, the shuyuan 書院, echoing his proposal to Mao Zedong for the promotion of canonical studies in On Six Canonical Classics, and to his political imaginary as described in Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics: During the Age of Great Unity, although the border of the country is abolished, there are still numerous divisions of autonomous regions on the Earth. The territory of each autonomous region is divided according to geographical convenience and climate. The territorial division is subordinated to unanimous law. . . . These autonomous regions only mean to be cultural groupings, because people living in the same territory have the same structure to express their public will.68
67. Xiong Shili, “On Six Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 5:708. 68. Xiong, “Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics,” in Complete Works, 1056.
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Similar ideas are seen in An Inquiry into Confucianism.69 Xiong is rather impetuous because of his utopian thoughts, but he never suffers from persecution for his argument of federal union under Communist rule over social democracy. He is covered by the cultural position of Great Unity, even though his statement about autonomous cultural groups appears to contradict the perspective of the democratic system in modern politics. The political scale for the age of the legitimate regime lies at a totally different level than does the cultural ideal of the age of perpetual peace. In the last paragraph, we can still see how utopian and cosmopolitan thought intertwined. The world of Great Unity posited by Xiong is based on the idea of the public world proposed in the “Carrier of Rites,” highly related to the substance of humaneness in the thought of becoming and to the interconnecting thread of humaneness proper to the doctrine of three ages. The apparent position is the cosmopolitan project urging for the union of everything in the world (under heaven). His utopian discourse carries a mask of atavism in mingling a national conservatism and moral universalism so that the distinction between civilization and barbarism is transformed. Xiong’s starting point is no doubt nationalism, but not one that could contain a telos, a terminus ad quem. Utopian ideas often serve as clues that aid critical reconstructions of history. The cosmopolitan vision has another project for the future.
Conclusion A Chinese intellectual like Xiong Shili, born under the imperial regime, participating in the nationalist revolution, living a republican ideal, and ending his life under the Communist regime during the Cultural Revolution, represents a type peculiar to a transitional period in modern Chinese history. His discourse connects ethics and politics in installing a historical teleology by way of a certain critical reconstruction. In appearance, he expresses himself as a typical nationalistic conservative. Unlike Liang Shuming, who engaged himself in the construction of a rural country, Xiong radicalized his cultural conservatism in ways similar to those of Ma Yifu. This radicalization created something akin to a conservative utopianism, which urges a democratic moral ideal in spite of any distortion of historical interpretations. This radical hermeneutics corresponds to Xiong’s experience of revolution and leads to an alternative reading of the classics. An hermeneutical circle spans the defeating experience of history and the vision of a future political order. This utopian motive predetermines Xiong’s reformation rhetoric. Aside from the utopian discourse, there is a cosmopolitan component inscribed within the doctrine of outer kingliness. Utopian or cosmopolitan? Far from being contradictory or exclusive, there is rather a homogeneous mutual implication on the basis of Confucian ethical and political order. Xiong’s cosmopolitan attitude is originally ethical. The distinction between civilization and barbarism needs to be transformed in accord with this ethical condition, so that there can be a universalist turn in Confucian ethics. The possibility of considering the cultural diversity among different nations or peoples is implied in cosmopolitan ethics. The coexistence of diverse ethical substance (in a Hegelian sense) permits a public realm common to nations, tribes, and individuals. The world (cosmos) as a public realm connects these nations and subjects.
69. Xiong, An Inquiry into Confucianism, in Complete Works, 508.
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The rhetoric mingling utopianism and cosmopolitanism produces an imaginary space so that Xiong, in confronting a value crisis, political crisis, or identity crisis, can gain hope for the future by returning to traditional classics. We may experience the authoritarian voice leaking through the literal meaning expressed by Xiong, in order to open the possibility of reflection and dialogue. Xiong’s imaginary space could be a space of and for hope. Human beings are more closely related on the global scale and should consider our common destiny in living together on the same Earth. Imagining a possible model for coexistence in the world can help us to critically analyze our historical reality and consider a possible future.
Bibliography Abensur, Miguel. L’utopie de Thomas More à Walter Benjamin. Paris: Sens & Tonka, 2009. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Cosmopolitan Patriots.” Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (1997): 617–39. Arendt, Hannah. The Promise of Politics. New York: Schocken Books, 2005. Beck, Ulrich. “The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity.” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 79–105. Brensciani, Umberto. Reinventing Confucianism. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute for Chinese Studies, 2001. Chak, Chi-shing. A Historical Study on Contemporary New Confucianism [Dang-dai xing-ru-xue shilun]. Taipei: Yun-Chen Press, 1993. Delanty, Gerard. The Cosmopolitan Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Henke, Frederick G., trans. The Philosophy of Wang Yang-Ming. New York: Open Court, 1916. Ho, Koon-ki T. “Several Thousand Years in Search of Happiness: The Utopian Tradition in China.” Oriens Extremus 30 (1983): 19–35. Ingram, James D. Radical Cosmopolitics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Kant, Immanuel. Kants Werke: Akademie Textausgabe. Vol. 8. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968. ———. Kant’s Political Writings. Edited by Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Legge, James. The Shoo King, or The Book of Historical Documents. London: Henry Frowde, 1865. ———. The Ch’un Ts’ew with the Tso Chuen. London: Henry Frowde, 1872. ———. The Works of Mencius. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895. ———. The I Ching, or The Book of Changes. New York: Dover, 1963 [1899]. Liang, Shuming. Remembering Xiong Shi-li [Yi xiong-shi-li xian-sheng]. Taipei: Ming-wen Books, 1989. Lourme, Louis. Qu’est-ce que le cosmopolitisme. Paris: Vrin, 2012. Makeham, John. “The New Daotong.” In New Confucianism: A Critical Examination, edited by John Makeham, 55–78. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Mannheim, Karl. Ideologie und Utopie. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1985. ———. Ideology and Utopia. Translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils. New York: Harvest Book, 1936. More, Thomas. Utopia. Edited by George M. Logan and Robert T. Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Nussbaum, Martha C. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” In For Love of Country?, by Martha C. Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen, 3–17. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Paquot, Thierry. Utopies et utopistes. Paris: La Découverte, 2007. Ricoeur, Paul. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Segal, Howard P. Utopias: A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Strauss, Leo. What Is Political Philosophy? Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973(1959). ———. Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Xiong, Shi-li. The Complete Works of Xiong Shi-li. Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001.
6
Anticipatory Utopia and Redemptive Utopia in Postrevolutionary China
Hang Tu
This chapter intervenes in the utopian dimension of Marxist thinking in postrevolutionary China. If Marxism in the twentieth century represented a constellation of theories, emotions, and memories oriented toward a communist utopia, the collapse of real existing socialism in Eastern Europe and China’s capitalist turn in the 1980s signified the eclipse of left-wing utopian thinking worldwide. The end of an emancipatory political temporality has broken the hyphen between Marxist thinking and utopianism. For Derrida, the disarticulation of Marxism from emancipatory politics generated a spectral Marx devoid of messianic hope, a hauntology infused with visions of the future that has become obsolete.1 Derrida further argued that this irreversible collapse of the political alternative envisioned by the Left might not be regarded as the end of Marxist criticism. Rather, it was only when Marxism was displaced from its teleological commitment to political dogma—only when it became spectral—that the cultural Left could regain its critical insights into the contradictions of capitalism. Nevertheless, the price to pay for such recognition, as Derrida might have been reluctant to elaborate, was to give up the fundamental faith that Marxist utopia represents something positive and possible. It is my contention that contemporary Chinese Marxism still speaks of a robust utopian desire against the global collapse of Marxist utopia. The genealogy of post– World War II Marxism from the Frankfurt school to the postmodern fad has been characterized by a culture of defeat in the emphatic identification with a “melancholy criticism” that embraced critical theory’s fate to engage politics without a realizable political agenda.2 In contrast to this, China’s dramatic reorientation from Maoist revolutionary utopia into neoliberal juggernaut since the 1980s has generated an ambiguous topology for left-wing thinking: a Marxist-Leninist regime supposedly representing 1. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, The Work of Mourning & the New International (New York: Routledge, 2006). For a detailed discussion on the eclipse of utopian thinking in Western Marxism, see Enzo Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), esp. introduction and chap. 1. 2. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 2006). For a discussion of Adorno’s “melancholy science,” see Gillian Rose, The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (London: Verso, 2014). For a general mapping of the leftwing culture and political defeats in the twentieth century, see Traverso, Left-Wing Melancholia, chap. 1.
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the vanquished and the downtrodden and global capitalism claiming to revive bourgeois culture and the fetish of commodities suddenly became strange bedfellows. The Chinese regime forcefully promotes neoliberal ethics of inexhaustible consumption and privatization, on the one hand, but still cleaves to some basic tenets of the leftwing political agenda, on the other.3 This creates a schizophrenic situation for Marxist thinking in China: the Chinese state still has the power to evoke Marxist imaginaries and realizable utopias and has aroused considerable expectations from the Left; yet this neoliberal Leviathan simultaneously frustrated any radical attempts to revitalize Mao’s revolutionary practice and paralyzed the anticapitalist critiques of left-wing radicals. In other words, the Chinese state has become both the nemesis and the Prometheus of the Left. I argue that, precisely because of this, contemporary Chinese Marxism retains the ability to conceive of another social order because of the possibility of realizing it. More specifically, I examine two Marxist thinkers in postrevolutionary China whose ideas illustrate the ambivalent interactions between the (post)socialist regime, left-wing politics, and utopianism. Li Zehou (李澤厚), a veteran Marxist aesthetician loosely affiliated with the humanist Marxism of the 1980s, was dedicated to reformulating Mao’s radical revolutionary agenda with a reformist neo-Kantian scheme. Li’s revision sought to “unlearn” the Marxist theory of the socialized revolutionary subject by harking back to Kantian self-legislation. Moreover, Li’s historical writing construes the May Fourth Enlightenment as an anticipatory utopia: Li’s historical excavation of the liberal tradition is a future anterior to retrieve as well as anticipate an era of enlightened China. To the contrary, Wang Hui (汪暉), the prominent leader of the Chinese neo-Left, is committed to revitalizing Mao’s revolution as a redemptive utopia to combat the malaise brought by neoliberalism. Borrowing heavily from a wide range of antimodern thinkers from Lu Xun to Carl Schmitt, Wang’s reformulation of Marxist political intervention bespeaks a strong impulse to provoke a sense of rupture through which lost meanings, suppressed desires, and failed battles of socialist utopia will be fulfilled in a redemptive manner.4 My attempts to categorize these two thinkers under the single brand “Marxist utopianism” will certainly raise eyebrows. The polarization of the Chinese intelligentsia since the early 1990s has produced so many sentiments, controversies, and politics of public-cum-academic scandal making, with Li’s and Wang’s names constantly invoked throughout the virulent ideological battles between the Left and the liberal over the contested meaning of Chinese revolution and enlightenment. Li was reduced to (or deified as) an enthusiastic proponent of 1980s liberal Marxism, while Wang was either embraced or rejected as an unrepentant Maoist eulogizing (or reviving) state socialism.5 My study is intended to be problem oriented rather than to provide a normative answer. 3. For a discussion on the revival of Maoist culture in contemporary China, see Jie Li and Enhua Zhang, eds., Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 4. My conception of redemptive and anticipatory utopia is inspired by Ernst Bloch, who distinguished between the abstract compensatory utopias (unrealizable imaginations) and the concrete realizable utopias (real existing utopian practices such as socialism). The difference lies in that Bloch believes that the imagined utopia offers only compensations for reality, while I argue that it is precisely its unrealizable feature that endows imagined utopia with a redemptive power. See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995). 5. See Xu Jilin 許紀霖, Dangdai zhongguo de qimeng yu fanqimeng 當代中國的啟蒙與反啟蒙 [Enlightenment and anti-enlightenment in contemporary China] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011); Xudong Zhang, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
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It is time to move beyond the apologetic/polemical model that is eager to “intervene,” “criticize,” and “(re)politicize” the Li-Wang debate. I refuse to offer a critique from an a priori “liberal” or “leftist” position that usually collapses the examination of ideas into political moralizing. By contrast, I hope to analyze their ideas from within their own categories and systems. The study of intellectual history, as Peter Gordon forcefully demonstrates, is the examination of the “ramification of ideas”—the mediatory process through which concepts branch out into the historical world.6 From this inner perspective, Li and Wang resemble each other in their bifurcated understanding of Chinese modernity defined by revolution and enlightenment.7 Nevertheless, I realize that this methodology runs the risk of depoliticizing—the bracketing of political concerns involuntarily erases the important fact that their visions of utopia are in almost all aspects diametrically opposed. Admittedly, Wang’s admirers have tended to cluster at the left end of political spectrum, while most of Li’s celebrants have claimed a self-righteous liberal position. This does not mean that I will refrain from criticizing their conceptual flaws, deceptive rhetoric, and willful distortion of history according to political needs. Rather, it is the contention of many intellectual historians that one can only better criticize certain idea by reading the idea against itself.8 Habermas’s famous slogan to “think with Heidegger against Heidegger” separates the ideational aspiration of Heidegger from his ideological applications. As I will show through my analysis, a better way to understand the utopian elements in Li and Wang is to acknowledge that their ideational aspirations retain certain validity even though their promises have been co-opted by ideologies.9 Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the link between ideas and their possible political realization proves to be both the breeding ground for utopian imaginations and the sword of Damocles that threatens to castrate utopia into pale and sad copies of dominant ideology.
Kantian Self-Legislation, May Fourth, and Li Zehou’s Solution Li Zehou (李澤厚) was probably the most influential philosopher in the 1980s, comparable to Sartre in France. One might say that he was the instigator of the New Enlightenment. In 1956, Li made his academic debut by offering his distinctive view on beauty in the “Great Debate on Aesthetics” (美學大辯論).10 Like most Chinese intellectuals of his age, he became dormant during the Cultural Revolution. Under Mao’s great instruction to “re-educate” urban intellectuals, Li was forced to do labor work at a rural May Seventh cadre school. During the 1970s, he began to study Kantian philosophy in an extremely difficult material and intellectual environment. The result was a pathbreaking monograph, Critique of Critical Philosophy: A Study of Kant, published in 1979. 6. See Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012): 3–7. 7. See David Der-wei Wang, The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), especially the coda. 8. For example, see John P. McCormick, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 7–8. 9. For a discussion of the ideational aspiration of ideas against its ideological application, see Peter E. Gordon, “Contextualism and Criticism in the History of Ideas,” in Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History, ed. Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10. Li Zehou 李澤厚, “Mei de keguanxing he shehuixing” 美的客觀性和社會性 [The objectivity and sociality of beauty], Renmin ribao 人民日報, January 9, 1957.
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Li sought to solve the Kantian paradox of self-legislation by combining Kantian epistemology with the Marxist theory of material practice. Moreover, Li demonstrates a type of historical-philosophical fusion that combines his historical reflection of the Cultural Revolution with his materialist intervention into Kant. Not only was the question of Kantian subjectivity thoroughly historicized, but now merely posing “back to Kant” became inseparable from a particular Chinese intellectual agenda in search of autonomy after the demise of Maoism. Meanwhile, Li published a series of treatises on modern Chinese intellectual history with an explicit enlightenment agenda. The most influential argument was his thesis that the dynamic tension between enlightenment and patriotism during the May Fourth was overthrown by the subsequent political struggles.11 As a result, the Communist Party prioritized the party-state over the enlightenment. Li asks for a recuperation of the May Fourth enlightenment values by entirely circumventing the era of high socialism. My analysis of Li focuses on his historical attempt to restructure Chinese modernity in the narrative of future anterior, with the bifurcated attempt to bracket socialism and excavate the May Fourth enlightenment tradition. From 1979 to 1987, Li penned a series of historical writings on modern Chinese intellectual thought and the question of Chinese enlightenment. Compiled in three volumes titled On Early Modern Chinese Thought (1979) (中國近代思想史論), On Ancient Chinese Thoughts (1985) (中國古代思想史論), and On Modern Chinese Thoughts (1987) (中國現代思想史論), Li undertook a systematic reflection on major intellectual currents, primarily neo-Confucianism, the May Fourth Enlightenment, and Chinese Marxism in history. These writings are characterized by a historical consciousness to reconstruct the suppressed tradition of enlightenment universalism in Chinese modernity. Li turned his Kantian thesis into a historical narrative, a series of events whose meanings could be interpreted as the gradual unfolding of reason in modern China. Li’s ambiguous stance between individual autonomy and sociality was historicized into a heroic struggle between enlightenment cosmopolitanism and revolutionary nationalism in twentieth-century China. Li’s bifurcated configuration of enlightenment and revolution resembles Kant and Hegel’s debates on the idea of historical progress. Kant views the gradual unfolding of reason as not just a form of consciousness but also a real historical force that can be institutionalized, actualized, and embodied in historical reality. Despite his pessimistic view on human nature as “unsocial sociability,” Kant believed that the “cunning of nature” will bring out its hidden purpose—the actualization of reason and freedom in history.12 However, this idea of historical progress is contradictory to Kant’s portrayal of humankind as an ahistorical telos: the very need for historical progress indicates the limitation of human reason, dethroning man from the final end of the universe to an imperfect historical being. Hegel’s solution is to transcend the limitation of individual reason by incorporating this particularity into absolute knowledge through the dialectical progression of history. Ironically, Hegel’s success in establishing a coherent theory of history results in abolishing human reason altogether, since humanity is now but the medium through 11. Li Zhou 李澤厚, “Qimeng yu jiuwang de shuangchong bianzou” 啟蒙與救亡的雙重變奏 [The variation of enlightenment and national salvation], in Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun 中國現代思想史論 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007). 12. Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Kant: Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41–53.
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which absolute knowledge is realized. As a result, Hegel views history as a form of automatism, in which a teleological and natural progression proceeds even without the participation of human consciousness. Contrary to this, Kant views history as growing out of men’s desires, intentions, and actions, reshaping the world in accordance with human reason.13 This divergence fundamentally shaped their views on the French Revolution. Inspired by the revolution, Kant nevertheless cautioned against treating the French Revolution itself as historical progress. He ambiguously put it that the “universal sympathy” toward the revolution shows a “historical sign” of moral progress.14 Instead of viewing the revolution as an automatic progression of history, Kant distinguished people’s affirmation of the principles of the revolution from the revolution in history, showing the gap between rationality and its empirical realization. Precisely because he fell back into his dualism, Kant could resist the Hegelian impulse of integration. This Kantian caution is of crucial importance in Li’s historical writing. Li argued that Chinese Revolution, in its passionate will to integrate and transcend individual consciousness, was the very evil that buried the gradual development of individual rationality. In his 1986 famous thesis, “The Dual Theme of Enlightenment and National Salvation,” Li contended that the May Fourth Chinese enlightenment started by intellectuals’ attempts to transform Chinese culture according to the ideas of individual freedom. Intellectuals,15 students, and reform-minded politicians undertook a broad cultural reformation designed to liberate the Chinese from “self-incurred immaturity” and embrace enlightenment values. Unfortunately, this cultural renaissance coincided with a succession of civil wars, nationalist movements, and political mobilizations, all of which threatened to subject individual consciousness to a greater cause of collective unity. Disillusioned by the impossibility of attaining personal freedom amid virulent political struggles, Chinese intellectuals sought to empower their enlightenment with a stronger historical will and political action.16 Li takes the case of Chinese Marxism as an example. He argues that Chinese Marxism originated from the spread of anarchism. During the process of political struggle, anarchism was gradually replaced by MarxistLeninism, because the latter has “a systematic and concrete revolutionary strategy for political action.”17 What is more, the subsequent militant struggles waged in the Communist Revolution further suppressed individual rights for the sake of survival. As a result, the search for individual rights was constantly postponed.18 Moreover, the rise of an overpowering revolutionary collective finds its vivid allegories in the thinking of Mao Zedong. Li treats the voluntarist impulse of Maoism as a combination of Hegelian logic and neo-Confucianism. Li’s philosophical rejection of Hegel is historically connected to his judgment that Mao’s thinking has a close affinity 13. This view is held by many neo-Kantian scholars. For example, Yovel argues that Kant’s philosophy of history already contains embryos of Hegelian synthesis, but Kant is able to resist the temptation of integration. See Yirmiyahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). For a defense of Hegel’s position, see Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfaction of Self-Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 14. This interpretation was expressed by Prof. Peter E. Gordon in his seminar on European Intellectual History during the fall term of 2016 at Harvard University. 15. Li Zehou 李澤厚, Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun 中國現代思想史論 [Treatises on modern Chinese thought] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007),1–20. 16. Ibid., 21. 17. Ibid., 27. 18. Ibid., 32.
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with the Hegelian logic, whose totalizing attempt was radicalized by Mao’s early voluntarism. In his essay “On the Youth Mao Zedong” (青年毛澤東), Li characterizes Mao’s thinking as dominated by “motion” (動), “struggle” (鬥), “overpowering self” (貴我), and “contemporaneity” (通今).19 Mao in his youth understood the nature of the universe as defined by incessant motion and so derived an ethics that emphasizes the infinite struggle between the subject and the object, men and nature. For Mao, the only thing that remains unchanged is the subjective battling spirit that is constantly fighting and resisting various kinds of external forces.20 Furthermore, Mao formulates a subjective ethics that rejects any sorts of categorical imperative. Rather, this ethics is motivated by a corporeal impulse, a sensuous pleasure, and a Nietzschean will to superhuman power to overcome the chaos of the changing universe. For Li, Mao’s ethics was inspired by different strings of old and new thoughts, ranging from the romantic heroism in traditional Chinese novels like The Water Margin to anarchism in the May Fourth Enlightenment.21 Li further argues that Mao’s early voluntarism fundamentally shaped his reception of Marxism in his mature years. Li contextualizes Mao’s study of Marxism to his years in Yan’an (延安), an era when Mao undertook the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to fight against the Nationalist Party and the Japanese invaders. Mao’s early voluntarism helped him understand Marxism rather as a set of military strategies: dialectical materialism is helpful to comprehend the constantly changing situation on the battlefield. Analyzing Mao’s most important writings in this period, Li argues that the conjoined force of early voluntarism and military strategies became the horizon on which Mao tried to grasp dialectical materialism.22 For example, Mao’s famous theory of contradiction (矛盾論) declares that being is forever in motion, which in turn produces numerous contradictions. Meanwhile, the universality of contradictions is accompanied by the particularity of contradictions: within a specific temporality, a particular set of contradictions comes to dominate motion. Overcoming this particular contradiction does not restore balance but pushes the subject into another circle of infinite struggles in which he confronts the next primary contradiction. Thus, dialectics in Mao does not lead to a Hegelian progression. Rather, it plunges the subject into a succession of antagonistic contradictions without any hope of overcoming them. For Li, this Taoist dialectical logic was derived from the voluntarist’s idea on the constancy of change, on the one hand, and the military strategist’s belief of permanent struggle against the enemy, on the other hand. The ultimate tragedy of Chinese socialism, for Li, is that Mao’s skewed Marxism took center stage after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).23 Mao’s somewhat existentialist logic turned him into a “permanent revolutionist”: his ingrained belief in the constancy of contradictions has led to an idiosyncratic emphasis on violent class struggles even after the establishment of the socialist regime. Moreover, if no contradictions are to be found, people must subjectively “create” the contradiction in order to transform the potential “other” into the social totality.24 To demonstrate this, Li examines Mao’s constant attempts to cope with the constancy of contradictions 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.
Ibid., 127. Ibid., 131. Ibid., 138–41. Ibid., 175–83. Ibid., 191. Ibid., 192–98.
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by mobilizing people’s subjective will in the era of high socialism. For Mao, nearly all problems in the building of socialism—the collectivization of agriculture, industrial modernization, the promotion of proletarian culture—might be solved through incessant class struggle. Drawing on his military experience, which would attribute contradictions to the existence of enemies, Mao constantly tried to find “the enemy” by imposing a succession of friend-and-foe distinctions upon a wide range of categories: Western imperialists, intellectuals, party capitalist roaders (走資派), and so on. In his famous slogan “criticism-unification-recriticism” (批評–團結–再批評), Mao always attempted to find “the other” within the self, only to absorb the last remnants of “otherness” in the self-sufficient structure of the unconditional, absolute totality of his socialism. Here, Hegelian logic has gone mad: the self’s integration into the universal does not lead to a dialectical progression but is constantly driven back into another set of particularities—personal and class identities—which, deemed once again as “enemies,” need to be repudiated, rectified, and transformed in the infinite cycle of contradictions. Ideally, a socialist self is someone who fully merges with the life of the proletarian masses. Mao asks for a cognitive transparency to every individual being, since only he who truly is part of the struggle for socialism is entitled to belong to the socialist collectivity. There is no difference between the self and the collective, since the self as a proletarian would constitute himself as a universal collective subject in history and act in the collective of which he is a part in its totality. However, in reality this greater unity is always to-bearrived-at but never arrives. As a result, individual consciousness is not only eliminated but is forever caught up in the infinite cycle of struggles. In the end, Li asks for a creative transformation of the enlightenment tradition. More specifically, he requires a return from Mao’s mad Hegelian logic to the Kantian moment of the May Fourth Enlightenment in order to regain individual freedom. He warns the reader that the similarity between the 1980s New Enlightenment and the May Fourth might lead to another round of political radicalism, during which individual rights would again be suppressed by a greater political cause. The way out, Li argues, is to creatively transform both the technological-social structure and the cultural-psychological structure of China. Drawing on his sedimentation theory, Li asks for a gradual reform of both the interiority and the exteriority of Chinese subjectivity through modernization process. In this way, Li’s historical excavation of the May Fourth tradition becomes a future anterior to retrieve as well as anticipate a realization of individual rights from the tyranny of collectivity. With this narrative of future anterior, Li restructured the entire discourse of modern Chinese intellectual history. This interpretive mode fundamentally altered the relationship between the May Fourth Enlightenment and the era of high socialism. The Maoist historiography emplotted the history of modern China as a melodrama that portrays the ascendance of the proletarian revolution as overcoming the inherent weakness of the May Fourth Enlightenment. This narrative attempts to enforce a stable, disciplined, and deterministic historical causality that views the building of socialism as irreversible historical progress. Contrary to this, Li rearranges the historical causality between enlightenment and revolution to make this drama intrinsically tragic: China’s embrace of socialism was at the sacrifice of dismantling the complex and entangled tradition of enlightenment that was overshadowed by Mao’s revolutionary politics.
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The Anti-modern, Mao’s Revolution, and Wang Hui’s Rebellion In the heat of Li Zehou’s enlightenment project, Wang Hui (汪暉) made his debut in the late 1980s with a humanistic interpretation on Lu Xun. In this academic debut, Wang argued that Lu Xun’s diatribe against the May Fourth Enlightenment harbored a cautious detachment from Western modernity.25 Given the time of his writing, the seemingly old-fashioned topic looked like a subtle critique of the 1980s New Enlightenment, whose tragic end resonated with Lu Xun’s reservations about the limit of total Westernization. The broader implications of Wang Hui’s intellectual agenda became clear to the Chinese intelligentsia only in 1997, when Wang published an essay in Tianya journal arguing for a more nuanced understanding of Mao’s legacy. It emerged as a key text for a group of prominent critics and scholars who became disillusioned with the advent of capitalism in China. Wang Hui was later coined by his detractors as the leader of this nascent “Chinese New Left” in a storm of debates that ensued. In the following decade, Wang Hui undertook a more audacious attempt by publishing an extravaganza of essays to reveal the implicit links between Li’s humanist Marxism and the neoliberal depoliticization of Mao’s socialist revolution, challenging the predominant Chinese intellectual consensus on the necessity of denouncing Mao’s revolutionary practice. The newly emergent neo-leftists in the 1990s situated China’s contemporary social problems in the uncritical embrace of modernity originating from Li’s enlightenment. For them, the intrusion of global capitalism was the realization of Li’s enlightenment utopia. What needed to be retrieved was precisely the Chinese socialist revolution. Thus, Wang Hui’s critical historiography constructs Mao’s revolution as a “modernity of antimodernity,” as he argues for the necessity of recuperating China’s socialist utopia to combat the rise of neoliberalism. Equipped with postmodernist and poststructuralist scholarship, Wang and his comrades were dedicated to deconstructing enlightenment universalism by investigating discursive operations and East/West power relations whereby certain progressive images of the Western Enlightenment were constructed, circulated, and stabilized in the 1980s New Enlightenment. More specifically, while the liberals deplored the return of the political, the New Left viewed Li Zehou’s philosophy as a “depoliticized politics” that was complicit with the ascendance of neoliberal capitalism in the post-Mao era. Furthermore, Wang Hui questioned Li’s attempt to circumvent Mao’s socialism in his enlightenment project. Contrary to Li’s narrative that regards Maoist politics as overthrowing the May Fourth enlightenment tradition, Wang views the Chinese Communist Revolution as something that grew organically from the May Fourth enlightenment. Thus, Wang regards Li’s enlightenment project as a “depoliticized politics” that systematically reversed the Maoist utopia defined by class politics, revolutionary internationalism, and proletarian consciousness. Wang Hui’s earlier dissension from Li could be traced back to his 1988 essay, “The Identity of Attitude in the May Fourth Enlightenment.” Wang proposes a conceptual framework of “attitude” (態度的同一性) to categorize the unconscious mental habits operating in the thoughts of the May Fourth thinkers.26 “Attitude” connotes an ambiguity that blurs the boundary between reason and emotion. It points to the May 25. Wang Hui, Fankang juewang 反抗絕望 [Rebel against despair] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2008). 26. Wang Hui 汪暉, “Zhongguo xiandai lishi zhong de wusi qimengyundong” 中國現代歷史中的五四啟蒙運 動 [The May Fourth Movement in modern Chinese history], in Wang Hui zixuanji 汪暉自選集 (Guangxi: Guangxi shifandaxue chubanshe, 1997).
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Fourth thinkers’ emotional embrace of the enlightenment without a thorough logical, historical, and cultural conceptualization of Western modernity. It derives more from the Chinese intellectuals’ urgent desires to break away from the Chinese tradition than from a systematic study of the West. Ironically, it is precisely this lack of understanding that yoked the May Fourth generation together in the first place, as they were pushed by the same radical desire to embrace something modern regardless of the ramifications. They were thus able to simplify sophisticated, usually contradictory, Western intellectual genealogies into a single attitude of rebellion against the Chinese tradition. As the movement deepened, it splintered from within not only because of the gradual unfolding of the complexities of Western modernity but also because of the incommensurability between Western theory and the Chinese situation. Wang’s implicit critique of Li’s position lies in his conclusion that the May Fourth was unable to go beyond an attitude of anti-traditionalism without breaking consensus. In other words, Li’s utopia proved to be a historical failure. Since the early 1990s, Wang Hui gradually shifted his theoretical lens toward a radical critique of capitalist modernity. Meanwhile, he strategically excavated the emancipatory aspects of the Cultural Revolution by prioritizing its potential political agency over its historical failures. One of the most provocative aspects of Wang’s thinking is his identification of Mao’s revolution with a genealogy of antimodern thoughts. For Wang, Mao’s dialectic embrace and refusal of modernization represents a long-standing Chinese tradition of radical critique against Western modernity: This antimodern theory of modernization is a characteristic not just of Mao Zedong thought, however; it is one of the major characteristics of Chinese thought from the late Qing onward. The discourse on China’s search for modernity was shaped in the historical context of imperialist expansion and a crisis in capitalism. Thus, those intellectuals and state officials who promoted modernization in China could not help but consider who China’s modernization could avoid the multiple problems of Western capitalist modernity. . . . As a result, at the heart of the search for Chinese modernity in Chinese thinking stands a huge paradox.27
This highly reductive antimodern theory is deeply contradictory, as a combination of historicism and presentism, strategic intent and conceptual magic, orthodoxy and hypocrisy, which reveals Wang Hui’s tactical improvisation that prioritizes the utopian impulse of this position as a radical criticism of Li’s enlightenment. For Wang, both the May Fourth and the 1980s New Enlightenment failed in its uncritical embrace of modernization agenda. At this point, Mao’s socialist saga ironically became the major provocation to continue the practice of antimodern theory against Western capitalist modernity. Furthermore, Wang’s philosophical categorization of Mao’s theory as antimodern was followed by his historical reconfiguration of Mao’s practice as a Schmittian conception of the political. Wang boldly asserts that the central motif of the radical politics of the past century might be termed “the politicization of twentieth century China” (二 十世紀中國的政治化).28 For Li, the dynamic interplay between Kantian self-legislation and nation building during the May Fourth was overthrown by Mao’s radical politics. 27. Wang Hui, The End of Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity, trans. Rebecca Karl (London: Verso, 2011), 14. 28. Wang Hui, in China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat and the Road to Equality, ed. Saul Thomas (London: Verso, 2016), 1–7.
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Contrary to this, Wang contends that Mao’s Communist Revolution grew organically from the May Fourth political culture. For Wang, the politicization of culture in the gradual transformation from enlightenment into revolution was both historically inevitable and politically empowering. Mao’s revolutionary practice involved a complex, interrelated process of political integration (政治整合), cultural politics (文化與政治), and the people’s war (人民戰爭).29 While Li views Mao’s militant Marxism as a Hegelian monstrosity that constantly devours “the other,” Wang connects it to the Schmittian understanding of the political as an existential decision distinguishing between friend and foe.30 In this regard, a succession of revolutionary struggles waged by Mao from the 1920s to the 1950s demonstrated an authentic (one might say apocalyptic) attempt to formulate new political subjectivities through a matrix of tactics such as the mass line policy, the united front, and revolutionary cosmopolitanism. Interestingly for Wang, the climax as well as the eclipse of Mao’s radical politics was the Cultural Revolution. Contrary to Li’s argument that Mao’s class struggle was a cyclical regression of violence, Wang views Mao’s class politics as a revolutionary attempt to formulate proletarian subjectivities. For Wang, Mao understood social classes as mobile rather than rigid categories, and his theory pointed out an opportunity to transform class antagonism into class integration. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was not meant to annihilate class enemies but was designed to transform enemies into revolutionary subjects.31 The Maoist-Schmittian friend and foe distinction was not so much about the annihilation of enemies through violence as about transforming enemies into friends of socialism through class struggle.32 In other words, the temporary categorization of a certain social class as the “enemy” was designed to “help” its members integrate into Mao’s proletarian subject. For Wang, the political empowers the proletarian agent and transforms the hierarchy of class into a Kojevian universal homogenous utopia. The utopian impulse of Wang’s intervention is revealed as he makes a highly controversial distinction between the theory and the practice of the Cultural Revolution. The hierarchicalization of the revolutionary class and the subsequent violent struggles against class enemies in the history of the Cultural Revolution did not stem from Mao’s theory; on the contrary, this tragic outcome was precisely the result of a deviation from Mao’s radical politics.33 For Wang, Mao’s theory of class struggle opened possibilities to democratize China by empowering political agency and transforming class enemies into democratic citizens; in reality, it was manipulated and turned into a tool of power struggles and justification for social stratification in favor of the new privileged ruling class.34 Wang further argues that the forgetting of the revolutionary potentialities of Mao’s class politics paved the way for a “depoliticized politics” in the post-Mao era. 29. Ibid., 5. 30. An example is Wang Hui’s attempt to use Schmittian logic to analyze the Korean War. See Wang Hui, “From People’s War to the War of International Alliance: The War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea from the Perspective of Twentieth-Century Chinese History,” in China’s Twentieth Century. 31. Wang Hui 汪暉, Quzhengzhihua de zhengzhi: Duanershishiji de zhongjie yu jiushiniandai 去政治化的政治: 短二十世紀的終結與九十年代 [Depoliticized politics: The end of China’s short twentieth-century and the nineties] (Beijing: SDX Press, 2008), 31. Chinese original: “如果革命主體的創造是一個階級轉化,那麼,階 級的對抗性就可能通過主體的轉化加以解決.” 32. Ibid., 33. Chinese original: “以區分敵我為中心的政治性階級概念並不必然地預設肉體消滅或強力控制的暴 力形式,恰恰相反,鬥爭與轉化是這一政治概念的兩個相互關聯的環節.” 33. Ibid., 30. 34. Ibid., 36.
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Neoliberalism canceled any radical democratic possibilities by depoliticizing this long tradition of revolution. The negation of the political entails a political practice that calls for its own restructuring of politics to suit the needs of global capitalism.35 If the split between Mao’s theoretical utopia and the skewed practice provided neoliberalism with a chance to assert itself, the depoliticizing process entailed by China’s market turn gradually wiped out radical democratic potentialities promised by Mao. Strangely though, Wang’s analytical dissection of neoliberalism is intertwined with a mythical eulogizing of the transfiguring power of revolution. On the one hand, he tries to uncover the historical trajectory that brought out revolution’s eclipse in an objective manner; on the other hand, Wang feverishly configures Mao’s revolutionary practice as tinted with a mythic power and unrealized potentialities. The idea/reality distinction mentioned above reveals that Wang had no fantasies about historical reality, nor did he wish to return to that idealized past. But neither was he prepared, even though Li chose to, simply to conform to the forgetting of revolutionary potentials initiated by the rise of the capitalist present. There is a passionate, or even apocalyptic, undertaking beneath Wang’s redemptive retrieval of revolutionary utopia: to infuse a depoliticized present with a Schmittian political intensity characterized by ruptures, actions, and existential decisions. In a recently published book Six Moments of Ah Q’s Life: In Memory of Xinhai Revolution Wang mythologizes the Chinese Revolution as a site of redemptive utopia.36 The True Story of Ah Q is Lu Xun’s classic novel that portrays the vicious cycle of revolutionary aspirations continually thwarted by the entrenched feudalist tradition in rural China. Ah Q, a pathetic subaltern looked down upon by nearly everyone around him, fantasized about becoming a powerful oppressor one day to rule over those people he hated. Lured by the promise of liberation and empowerment, Ah Q enthusiastically embraced the Xinhai Revolution only to find out that the reactionary power structure proves to be more intransigent than he expected. Ah Q’s ultimate execution as a “revolutionary rebel” bespeaks Lu Xun’s dark consciousness, a staunch refusal of both a present and future that promise the sweet dream of human emancipation. In contrast to Lu Xun’s pessimism, Wang Hui forcefully captures six moments in Ah Q’s experience that faintly reveal the possibility of a positive revolution. Playing with Agamben’s thesis on instinct and radical political potentiality,37 Wang Hui argues that there are countless moments when Ah Q’s instinctive rebellion could have broken the passivity that imprisoned his agency. Ah Q’s failure, poverty, humiliation, and loss of himself all generate a messianic potentiality to transcend his petty being into a higher cause of sublime emancipation, yet this redemptive moment is constantly suppressed by his self-inflicted enslavement. The internalization of a messiah’s power into Ah Q resonates with Walter Benjamin’s thesis on the “weak Messianic power” of the present: “We have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim”;38 present potentialities always anticipate and enact a redemptive future to come. 35. Ibid., 37–47. 36. Wang Hui 汪暉, Ah Q Shengmingzhong de liugeshunjian 阿Q生命中的六個瞬間 [Six moments of Ah’Q’s life: In memory of Xinhai Revolution] (Shanghai: Huadongshifandaxue chubanshe, 2014). 37. Giorgio Agamben, Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 38. Walter Benjamin, “Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 254.
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This process is characterized by constant and vicious struggles and failures, just as Ah Q’s weak redemptive power cannot be achieved easily. It must wait until a revolutionary chance has come to “blast a specific era out of the homogenous course of history.”39 But who represents this historical agency that fulfils and redeems Ah Q’s weak messianic power? Wang Hui does not elaborate on this messiah, but he provides hints by saying that Ah Q’s story is an allegory of the beginning of the Chinese Revolution. It is only the advent of the radical, uncompromising Chinese Revolution that liberated the political potentiality of Ah Q. Chinese Revolution was the site of redemption that successfully animated the flashing messianic moment in Ah Q’s life, turning the oppressed present into a Benjaminian “now-time.” Here, the contradiction between the analytic and the mythic is transformed into a blind belief in the redemptive power of Chinese revolution. Through the tales of Ah Q, Wang eulogizes the Xinhai Revolution as a quasi-theological “event” that produces political ruptures and biological instincts for a perpetual revolution.
Conclusion: Realistic Utopia? In this chapter, I examined two forms of utopian Marxism in postrevolutionary China: Li Zehou’s humanist Marxism that constructs the May Fourth Enlightenment as an anticipatory utopia and Wang Hui’s recuperation of the antimodern aspect of Mao’s revolution as a redemptive utopia. My investigation of the ideational aspirations of their thinking resists reducing ideas into ideology. By no means do I attempt to ignore the political function of utopia. It is not simply an accident that almost all of Li Zehou’s major philosophical achievements coincided with shifting ideological practices of the party-state. Deng’s effort to shift political legitimacy from class struggle into economic development in the 1980s was desperately in need of a revisionist Marxism to justify his disarticulation from Maoism. Li Zehou’s repudiation of Mao’s revolutionary practice fell upon an authority already prepared to receive it. Similarly, Wang Hui’s retrieval of a distinctive Chinese path of (anti)modernity dubiously resonated with the post-Tiananmen Chinese regime’s stringent call for a “market socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Furthermore, his 2009 essay China’s Rise: Experience and Challenges, in which Wang Hui contends that a mechanism of self-correction has existed within the party, played a crucial role throughout the sixty years of PRC history.40 Mao should be credited with paving the way for the rise of Deng’s economic reform. Written for the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the nation, the essay was penned in a type of politico-philosophical fusion that grotesquely wove the critique of neoliberalism into propaganda for the party-state. Wang Hui seemed to invest the party-state with metaphysical foundations—state socialism as a matter of real substance to stand against global capitalism. This dynamic interplay between utopian thinking and real politics reveals a peculiar paradox of Marxism in contemporary China: left-wing politics retains the imaginaries of another social order, yet it simultaneously harbors a Machiavellian desire to actualize its utopia through the present regime. This dangerous liaison might 39. Ibid., 263. 40. Wang Hui 汪暉, “Zizhu yu kaifang de bianzhengfa: Zhongguojueqi de jingyan jiqi mianlin de tiaozhan” 自主開放的辯證法:中國崛起的經驗及其面臨的挑戰 [A dialectic of autonomy and opening up: The experience and challenge of China’s rise], in Wenhuazongheng 文化縱橫 2 (2012).
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have originated much earlier from the neo-Confucian tradition that brings contemplative thinking and social practice together in the “unity of thought and action” (知行 合一). It might also derive from the old Marxist preoccupation with the unifying of theory and praxis. It might simply be a schizophrenic response to the bizarre marriage between a Marxist-Leninist regime and global capitalism. Meanwhile, it is an irony that Li and Wang’s almost diametrically opposed utopias are shaped by the same bifurcated interpretation of Chinese modernity emblematized by revolution and enlightenment. This inevitably made an impact on their political followers. For the neo-Left, the liberal’s insistence on the coherence of China’s twentieth century defined by the continuous effort to realize Li Zehou’s enlightenment is problematic: it relies on a bifurcated interpretation that denaturalizes Mao’s claim of the legitimacy of Chinese socialism, on the one hand, but renaturalizes enlightenment intellectuals’ uncritical embrace of global capitalism, on the other. For the liberal, the neoLeft’s remobilization of socialist legacies to overcome global capitalism comes at the sacrifice of understanding the entangled relation between enlightenment and Chinese modernity in history. Most ironically, both selective regroupings of the past are motivated by a redemptive desire to realize the aspirational significance of the unredeemed ideas from the past. However, both approaches end up enforcing a stable, inevitable, and deterministic historical causality that legitimizes the advent of global capitalism / revolutionary politics as irreversible processes. In the end, the act of disrupting the continuum of one historical narrative turns to preserve the stability of another historical narrative that is equally suppressive. Because of this, the possible materialization of both Li’s and Wang’s utopias looks ominous at best. The naïve fantasy of Li’s followers in the 1980s who were so convinced that their enlightenment would emerge victorious by completely abandoning revolutionary politics resembled the bombastic self-assertion of the liberal intelligentsia of the May Fourth generation, yet both led to disastrous ends. Meanwhile, the neo-Left seems to have forgotten the extent to which Wang’s redemptive utopia is indebted to Carl Schmitt, whose own political practice, instead of reforming political pathologies of Weimar liberalism, led to the Nazi regime, which was even worse. As Schmitt’s fascination with Hobbes reveals, the other side of Schmittian existentialism is the politics of fear.41 Similarly, the dark side of the empowering agency of Mao’s politicization is precisely to frighten people to conform to his revolutionary utopia. Neo-leftists spoke so much about the sense of human dignity endowed by Mao’s revolution (尊嚴的政治) and the loss of such dignity under neoliberalism. Never, ever, did they explain how and why Mao’s attempt to dignify proletarian subjects was intertwined with a politics of terror in practice and in theory. Furthermore, as McCormick points out, one of the central flaws of Schmitt’s theory is his willingness to make hostile friends simply because of the existential need to annihilate enemies.42 Compared to this, it did matter to the neo-Left that neoliberalism, as the greater enemy, did not win. The party-state that would also be adversaries in the absence of the greater enemy, could necessarily become a “friend” in the state of emergencies. It remains unclear, though, whether this friend will suppress the enemy in a manner much more ruthlessly than the neo-Left could have ever hoped.
41. McCormick, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, 249–92. 42. Ibid., 280.
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At the beginning of this chapter, I compared utopian Marxism in China with the dystopian feeling that paralyzed left-wing politics in the West. Western Marxism woke up in 1989 and discovered that Marx’s great promise of a futuristic revolutionary utopia was no longer valid. A widespread left-wing melancholy permeated Marxist thinking in the West, pondering the history of socialism as but a succession of catastrophes with the loss of a messianic hope of liberation. I suggest that this melancholia might result not only from the exhaustion of left-wing political movements but also from their inability to conceive of another socioeconomic order. Ironically, the eclipse of leftist politics generated an unprecedented radicalization of critical theory in academia. Despite of its radical textualism, radical theory has been unable to provide a realistic utopia as a viable alternative. One is tempted to argue that institutionalized critical theory tends to proffer an imaginary escape from left-wing intellectuals’ traumatic embeddedness within the neoliberal present. This trauma in turn produced a feverish desire to identify any social conflict as the revival of leftist mass movements. Recently, the melancholyturned-romance found its echo in the chorus of protests exploding from the Occupy Wall Street movement. Yet the leftists were quickly disappointed by the fact that, along the spectrum of heterogeneous intellectual traditions that shaped the movement, the Marxian call for resistance and revolution could not even be accounted as a marginal reference.43 That the radical intellectuals’ constant evocation of “agency,” “outside,” and “subversion” leads only to a phantasmagoric resistance related to, if not exhausted by, its inability to arouse any utopian aspirations. In light of this, Chinese Marxist interventions exemplified by Li and Wang have revitalized utopian aspirations and political alternatives that were crucial to the left-wing politics of the twentieth century. Regardless of their disparate theoretical premises, Li and Wang demonstrated that, against Derrida’s elegiac teaching, Marxism may still cleave to utopian imaginations to provoke political alternatives, even though this power to arouse fantasies, hopes, and expectations was repeatedly betrayed by those who deployed them. Meanwhile, the liaison between utopia and real politics indicates that utopian imaginations prove to be too dangerous to contain: the power and the curse of Chinese Marxism lies in the constant collapse of ideas into ideology, utopia into reality, resistance into conformity. The predicament of Marxism in China and the West present the fundamental dilemma of left-wing intellectual thinking, with the fear of co-optation and integration on the one side and the anxiety of losing political anchoring point on the other. At the very heart of Marxism was a paradoxical distancing from the existing power politics to which it remains inextricably bound. It is the subject of intense debates whether Adorno’s “melancholy science” would be the only path for the Left to take in the absence of a Marxist utopia. Nevertheless, it is my contention that if Marxism wishes to retain its critical power as a legitimate method of intellectual inquiry and genuine political commitment, it should never become the opposite of Adorno’s melancholy—that is, Nietzsche’s gay science—in the future to come.
43. For an excellent analysis of the “inward turn” of the occupy Wall Street movement, see Eva Cherniavsky, Neocitizenship: Political Culture after Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 2017), chap. 6. For a genealogical investigation of the links between this movement and Post-Marxism, see Warren Breckman, Adventures of the Symbolic: Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), esp. introduction.
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Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso, 2006. Agamben, Giorgio. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Translated by Daniel HellerRoazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Benjamin, Walter. “Thesis on the Philosophy of History.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Edited by Hannah Arendt, 253–64. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Vol. 1. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Breckman, Warren. Adventures of the Symbolic: Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Cherniavsky, Eva. Neocitizenship: Political Culture after Democracy. New York: New York University Press, 2017. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International. New York: Routledge, 2006. Gordon, Peter E. “Contextualism and Criticism in the History of Ideas.” In Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History. Edited by Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyn, 32–55. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. ———. Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Jie Li and Enhua Zhang, eds. Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Kant, Immanuel. Kant: Political Writings. Edited by H. S. Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Li Zehou 李澤厚. “Mei de keguanxing he shehuixing” 美的客觀性和社會性 [The objectivity and sociality of beauty]. Renmin ribao 人民日報, January 9, 1957. ———. Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun 中國現代思想史論 [Treatises on modern Chinese thought]. Beijing: Salian shudian, 2007. Li Zhou 李澤厚. “Qimeng yu jiuwang de shuangchong bianzou” 啟蒙與救亡的雙重變奏 [The variation of enlightenment and national salvation]. In Zhongguo xiandai sixiangshi lun 中國現代思 想史論. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2007. McCormick, John P. Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pippin, Robert B. Hegel’s Idealism: The Satisfaction of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rose, Gillian. The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno. London: Verso, 2014. Traverso, Enzo. Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Wang, Dave Der-wei. The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Wang, Hui 汪暉. Ah Q Shengmingzhong de liugeshunjian 阿Q生命中的六個瞬間 Six moments of Ah’Q’s life: In memory of Xinhai Revolution]. Shanghai: Huadongshifan daxue chubanshe, 2014. ———. China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat and the Road to Equality. Edited by Saul Thomas. London: Verso, 2016. ———. The End of Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity. Translated by Rebecca Karl. London: Verso, 2011. ———. Fankang juewang 反抗絕望 [Rebel against despair]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2008. ———. Quzhengzhihua de zhengzhi: Duanershishiji de zhongjie yu jiushiniandai 去政治化的政治:短二 十世紀的終結與九十年代 [Depoliticized politics: The end of China’s short twentieth-century and the nineties]. Beijing: SDX Press, 2008. ———. Wang Hui zixuanji 汪暉自選集. Guangxi: Guangxi shifandaxue chubanshe, 1997.
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———. “Zizhu yu kaifang de bianzhengfa: Zhongguojueqi de jingyan jiqi mianlin de tiaozhan” 自主開放的辯證法:中國崛起的經驗及其面臨的挑戰 [A dialectic of autonomy and opening up: The experience and challenge of China’s rise]. In Wenhuazongheng 文化縱橫 2 (2012). Xu Jilin 許紀霖. Dangdai zhongguo de qimeng yu fanqimeng 當代中國的啟蒙與反啟蒙 [Enlightenment and anti-enlightenment in contemporary China]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Zhang, Xudong. Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
Part III Fictional Interventions
7
Utopianism Is a Humanism About Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy
Yinde Zhang
One can no longer ignore the growing body of dystopian literature published recently in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of the Sinophone world. Undeniably, these spatial and temporal projections carry dark allegories about history and the present day, taking an ironic view of the current harmonious dreams promoted by a powerful state. Their critical awareness, however, has often been misunderstood and perceived instead as the expression of an apocalyptic and fatalist vision, leading to frequent claims about the end of utopia. Unmistakably, this general disenchantment is justified by the disintegration of Communist ideology, the devastation wrought by an ultraliberal economy, and the threat of ecological and geopolitical disasters. However, is the utopian dream really disappearing, and does this include utopianism that is not linked to any ideological dogma or blueprint but to the basic human yearning for a better society and life? Does the critique by anti-utopian literature of the instrumentalized utopia mean that utopia should nowadays be condemned as a monolith, or should we on the contrary reconsider it in its plurality and historicity, in particular by emphasizing the persistence of utopianism as a social and individual resistance to various forms of repression and alienation? Is it not necessary, in this sense, to redefine utopia less as a demagogic topolect and more as humanistic discourse? This chapter provides some answers to these questions by examining the Jiangnan Trilogy, published by Ge Fei between 2004 and 2011,1 as this dystopian fiction calls for a resurgence of hope by introducing a displacement that 1. Ge Fei’s Jiangnan sanbuqu 江南三部曲 [Jiangnan trilogy] includes Renmian taohua 人面桃花 [Peach blossom beauty, 2004], Shanhe rumeng 山河入夢 [Landscapes in dream, 2007], and Chunjin Jiangnan 春盡江南 [End of spring in Jiangnan, 2011]. The three volumes were first published separately and then reissued together as a trilogy by the Shanghai wenyi chubanshe in 2012. Page numbers in this chapter refer to the first edition, vol. 1 (Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 2004), vol. 2 (Zuojia chubanshe, 2007), and vol. 3 (Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2011). All translations are mine. The title of the first volume hints at a poem by Cui Hu (崔護 fl. 796), “Written in a Village South of the Capital”: This very day last year, oh, at this very place A pretty face outshone the flowers of peach trees I do not know today where shines the pretty face Only the pretty flowers smile in vernal breeze
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consists of moving utopia from a fallacious perfect society toward a human-centered place, in a historically determined way. Throughout three volumes spanning one hundred years of Chinese contemporary history, the novels call into question the perversity of modernity through a utopian village called Huajiashe, which successively gave rise to a revolution gone wrong, a totalitarian state, and a consumerist tyranny. This dystopian variation constitutes an allegorical frame of the “ideological” vision of a utopia, based, for instance, on myths of nation, progress, and prosperity. In parallel, the novel builds on a dichotomous structure where human utopia is opposed to any (anti) utopian topography, to the extent that the emancipation project underlies the narrative, in favor of social and individual values against political or mercantile powers and their destructive effects. This chapter investigates the way the Jiangnan Trilogy stages its utopia of the human,2 which relies on ethics rather than ontological contributions to a misleading fairyland. A double approach, both thematic and chronological—Huajiashe’s representation and its consecutive variant will come under close scrutiny—could apply to the study of this work, insofar as its utopian imagination of human beings is inscribed at the core of the historical and social crisis. If utopianism is humanism, as I would argue, it takes here a clearly contextualized shape, which requires that the strain between fictional construct and social discourse is taken in account; thereby, it opens up a multitude of meanings, including a network of interrogations and incoherence. Rather than identifying the human dimension of utopia as an alternative certainty against disastrous topicality, this chapter aims to point out the coexistence of hope and pessimism as the author’s constant oscillation between doubts and quest corroborates this utopia’s inherent ambivalence between negation and possibility, as defined by Adorno.3
(《提都城 南莊》:去年今日此門中,人面桃花相映紅。人面不知何處去,桃花依舊笑春風). Xu Yuan Zhong, trans., Songs of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry (New York: Penguin Books in Association with New World Press, 1994), 70. 2. We borrow the notion from Emmanuel Levinas: “In the presence of certain acts of resistance and martyrdom, daringly carried out in our world in the name of the pure human, the utopian human, against the efficacy of powers and powerful political entities, that ethics affirms its objective status, shows itself to be Wirklichkeit, efficient reality, and no longer lets itself be repressed among the powerless ‘beautiful souls’ or ‘unhappy consciousnesses.’ In any case, it would be, beyond the contribution of utopian socialism analyzed by Buber, the credo of his own philosophical anthropology in which the relation of the human to his neighbor is conceived of on the famous model of ‘I and Thou,’ distinct from the objectification and the domination that always triumphs in the eyes of the objective gaze. The ‘I-Thou’ model allows us to conceptualize a firm distinction between the society and the State, and to conceive a society without ‘powers.’” Emmanuel Lévinas, “Utopia and Socialism,” in Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Michael B. Smith (New York: Colombia University Press, 1999), 116–17. Cf. also, Catherine Chalier, Lévinas: L’utopie de l’humain [The utopia of the human] (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993). 3. “Utopia is essentially in the determined negation, in the determined negation of it merely is, and by concretizing itself as something false, it always points at the same time to what should be.” “Something’s Missing: A Discussion between Ernest Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing,” in Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklunburg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 12. As pointed out by David Wang in the conclusion of his essay on the last volume of the trilogy, “It would not be impossible for the poet to write out a utopia from the waste land, at another turning point.” 但在時間的另一個轉折點上詩人未嘗不可能寫出荒原 裡的烏托邦 David Der-wer Wang, “Wutuobang li de huangyuan—Ge Fei Chunjin jiangnan” 烏托邦裡荒 原—格非《春盡江南》[The waste land within the utopia: About Ge Fei’s End of Spring in Jiangnan], Dushu 讀書 [Read] 7 (2013): 51. Jeffrey C. Kinkley delivers a different standpoint, by stressing the dystopian temporal cyclicalism that seems to feature Ge Fei’s work: Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) 110–17.
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Desire and Historical Temporality The first attempt to build the utopia of the human is reflected in a dehistoricizing writing, as attested by the initial volume, Peach Blossom Beauty. The author engages in a private narrative to transform history, for instance, the circumstances around the revolution of 1911, into intimate experiences undergone by the protagonist, Xiumi 秀米, who reaches puberty at the beginning of the story. This metaphorization of desire certainly expresses the author’s intention to rid himself of the established genre of the “novel of the future,” such as the one inaugurated by Liang Qichao in 1902, reappropriated by propaganda a century later as a prophetic literature, legitimating the renaissance of the nation. However, by emphasizing personal impulsive desire as a counterweight to the teleological utopia, the novel raises the question of how to avoid at the same time any risk of a-dialectic consciousness facing the historical temporality that is indispensable for any human experience as well as any perspective of possibilities. The dehistoricized writing,4 leaning toward a human-centered space, is grounded in a binary and oppositional spatial construction between a fulfilled utopian site and an oneiric heterotopia. At the very beginning of its existence, Huajiashe appears to be located on a remote island, like the earthly paradise, which seemed to be dominated by peace, equality, and abundance. Inspired both by the archetype of the peach blossom spring and the idea of the great unity, this fulfilled utopia hosts a retirement community as well as revolutionary activists, before proving in fact to be a den of bandits who commit frequent acts of violence and destruction. This dystopian representation is explained by the lust for power, which sparks a bloody rivalry between leaders ready to maintain their hierarchical relationship within the so-called egalitarian community. This cacotopia, which eventually autodestructs, is counterbalanced by another place, which is dreamlike, absent, and invisible, as it only exists in Xiumi’s mind, through a kind of elsewhere of elsewhere that transcends the political project with intimate desires and impulsions. Fascinated by the idea of great unity described by Zhang Jiyuan 張季元, the clandestine activist Xiumi was no doubt sustained by wishes close to some revolutionary proposals when she created the Autonomic Association of Puji and a school in town after her journey to Japan (165, 167), pushing her aspiration as far as an egalitarian society “providing people with the same quantity of smiles” (201). Nevertheless, these enterprises, which have been ephemeral, have little to do with any political project concerning future Chinese society. They instead obey personal ethics and affectivity which commit Xiumi to charitable work or allow her to retreat into her innermost feelings. Lacking a proper pedagogy, her school comes closer to a hospice created to receive the vagabonds or beggars to whom she feels connected. The moment that crystallizes her endeavors is that of distributing rice porridge one day during a severe famine (266), for the scene appears to obliterate for an instant suffering and inequality. Actually, this philanthropic stance dissimulates at times the secrets of the young protagonist in her love life. In this respect, Huajiashe is diverted from its revolutionary function— the clandestine place of fomenting the uprising—into a private signification. The site facilitates the revelation of desire as Xiumi’s kidnapping allows her to experience freely 4. It is worth noting the parody process used by Ge Fei, who gives in brackets biographical notices for some characters as guarantee of historical credibility while they are simulacra devices that dismantle historiographic discourse by strengthening fictional legitimacy.
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her first loving emotion while discovering Zhang Jiyuan’s private diary, in which the revolutionary martyr has confessed his veiled passion for the young girl. The site of detention becomes an area for reading that offers the pubescent heroine an unexpected sentimental education and emotional development. Nevertheless, the author has no intention of writing a melodrama, as some studies assert in stressing the love story between Xiumi and Zhang Jiyuan, even suggesting an underlying Electra complex. The representation of desire, for the author, is in fact meant to explore more intensively the protagonist’s psyche, as her tendency toward seclusion and impulsiveness translates a specific form of utopian consciousness that appears to be subject to schizophrenia and cut off from the dialectic.5 The dreamlike world that Xiumi builds and lives in is described as a reclusive and self-sufficient universe. Her favorite habitation is the closed pavilion where her father found shelter (160). She feels paradoxically free even as she finds herself incarcerated (231). The trope of retreat comes closer to a kind of autism, since she feigns aphasia while comparing the human heart to an isolated island (275). Such autism results in a considerable spatialized effect on time. Xiumi’s psychological temporality exhibits two important characteristics. On one hand it proves to be as regressive as the protagonist is, at the end of the novel, under the impression that a river runs back in time showing her self-image over twenty years old (276). The reverse movement joins the morbid flow, as the hallucinatory scene announces her own death, which happens when her vanishing father’s smiling face looms up out of ice flowers. On the other hand, time reveals its repetitive and circular nature. Her ceaseless activity follows an impulsive and almost mechanical gesture that forbids her to stop acting. In her own words, she does one thing just to forget another (195); she is fascinated by what is impossible (235), without any axiological care, as though under magical influence (196). To a certain extent, her restless engagement refers to the revolution in its dynamic sense and as well as its cyclic movement. In fact, this regressive and repetitive temporality highlights a diverging and deteriorated time insofar as it triggers the rupture of historical time. The latter implies flow and duration, while the two temporalities are eliminated by the obsessive acts that neither lead to any future nor draw up to the becoming. The author succeeds in dissociating her aspiration from any political effectiveness by staging Xiumi’s “unrealistic” dreams. In parallel, in emphasizing her pathological “fixism”—Xiumi’s obsession is perceived by her entourage as silly or foolish (痴), like her father’s obsession—the author also suggests the limits of the utopian consciousness due to its excessive dehistoricizing tendency. When it annihilates the distance between desire and satisfaction, as the heroine seems subject to, it becomes badly a-dialectic since it tends to dismiss not only the totality of concrete historical situations but the very historical dimension of existence. Therefore, the major risk would be to fall into a “reified thought” by substituting quantitative time for qualitative time. That would paradoxically suffocate the possible in the name of doing the impossible.
5. Joseph Gabel, Ideologies and the Corruption of Thought, ed. Alan Sica (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 61–70. See also, Raymond Ruyer, L’utopie et les utopistes (Paris: PUF, 1950).
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Philia as Social Resistance The second part of the trilogy turns to a very different optic in addressing the issue, as a salutary otherness has been introduced in the behavior of Tan Gongda 譚功達, Xiumi’s son and head of the County Meicheng. Although he inherits a kind of foolish obsession from Xiumi, this dreamer differs from his mother in his capacity to develop a form of friendship and of “to be together,” which proves to be a valuable social force against totalitarianism in the new era of socialism. In a way analogous to the preceding volume, the second appearance of Huajiashe serves to crystallize the criticism of dystopia. However, the author stresses its renewed characteristics by denouncing both totalitarianism and instrumental rationality in terms of their complicity in establishing a dominating order. The utopian site is thus reborn as an idyllic popular commune, inhabited by slightly more than 1,600 brave souls, undoubtedly in reference to Charles Fourier’s Phalanx.6 Being a closed world, it tends toward totality and perfection through the institution of a “harmonious” community without division, symbolized by a carefully ordered architecture and a authoritarian administrative organization. Nevertheless, the perfection it invents through this form of totality and closure barely dissimulates the conspicuous lack of freedom for its inhabitants, who are all serious and wistful, as their lives are entirely controlled by a mystic and invisible personality, Party Secretary Guo Congnian, the Big Brother who makes transparent every house, gesture, and word. The allusion to the Orwellian universe is easily perceptible as Ge Fei resorts to symbols such as the number 101 to designate the bureau in charge of surveillance (276).7 Not content with the ostracism of such a police state, Ge Fei points out its underlying ideological logic by accusing instrumental rationality of being complicit in the totalitarian mechanism. The novel succeeds in showing this perverted version of modernity, generating a paradoxical process by which the emancipation project is reversed, becoming therefore its contrary,8 for the whole popular commune suffers from tyrannical laws that come from the vicious parallel between mastery over the nature and domination of human beings. The figuration of the protagonist illustrates the ambivalent status of Tan Gongda. As an idealist, he is at least both adept in navigating the system and victim of the very system relying on the communist and scientist credo. Captivated by the progress exemplified by the Soviet model, he has made himself a “project man” who never moves without a blueprint in his hand. This frantic administrator-engineer has plunged into numerous more or less feasible enterprises, which run from the construction of a dam to the exploration of gas energy, competing with the ancient and mythic hero Yu Gong 愚
6. “Il faut un peu forcer de nombre dans la phalange d’essai, l’élever à 1900 et 2000, y compris la cohorte salariée, parce qu’elle aura plus de difficultés à surmonter que celles qu’on fondera postérieurement et qu’on réduira d’abord à 1800 et ensuite à 1700: le nombre fixe étant 1620, qu’il faudra un peu excéder, surtout pendant les premières générations qui manqueront de vigueur.” Charles Fourier, Le nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire ou les séries passionnées (Paris: Bossange Père, 1829) 119. 7. In 1984, the room 101 is the place where Winston Smith is eventually rendered submissive. See George Orwell, 1984 (Signet Classics, 1961), 232. 8. T. W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
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公9 in his Promethean actions.10 The benefits of these necessary modernization projects are not to be denigrated. The author’s disapproval rather relates to the fact that Tan Gongda, full of confidence in progress, ignores the political consequences of utilitarian rationality, triggered by such an excessive belief in the infinite powers of reason, as it risks transposing onto the administration geometrical spirit and mathematical methods if it is deprived of values and finality. Guo Congnian 郭從年, the secretary of the party and the legislator, is the personification of human domination via the scientific method. He applies a rational rigor to population control by banning any spontaneous desire or irrational impulse because of their unpredictability. The work he imposes on villagers becomes interiorized duty unless a punishment for brainwashing intervenes. His assiduous reading of The Thousand and One Nights, especially the recurrent image of the forbidden doors from the tale “The Man Who Never Laughed Again,” makes explicit an integral logocentrism, which signifies the aberrant logic of alienation through mutual surveillance. What preserves Tan Gongda’s utopian desire from any alliance with power is fortunately another facet of his personality, a “sentimental” one, which conceals his deeply humanistic propensity. The blueprints he continues to draw carry in reality “antiscientific” marks, as they are covered with unreadable numbers, which prove to be less technical data than surprising clues about his affections for Yao Peipei 姚佩佩, his young secretary. His so-called daydreams, “foolishness,” or confusing moments actually extract him from the danger of objectivation to redirect him toward human otherness and encounter. The dual posture resting on the displacement from the sphere of I/it to that of I/Thou11 permits Tan Gongda to formulate his utopia of the human by forging a friendship with his neighbor in a starkly repressive context, for instance, with Yao Peipei, the pariah. Under the cover of melodrama, Ge Fei describes their affective adventure with an antidictatorial aspect, as their mutual attachment involves a friendly solidarity that is transformed into stubborn resistance against political suppression. Yao Peipei is a marginalized young woman who suffers from a problematic familial origin because her father was accused of being “counterrevolutionary.” She is excluded from the community like K of Kafka’s Castle, about which Ge Fei wrote a brilliant essay.12 This outcast status recalls a state engaged in creating a society composed only of “new men,” by eliminating any impure element, as though the regime would ensure the extension of revolution’s destruction to the social network. Tan Gongda recklessly opposes this discrimination process as witnessed by the care he takes of the newcomer, in spite of collective animosity. He first recognizes for the victim fundamental rights of existence, by providing her with a job and housing opportunities. His spontaneous and daring act draws up a community that runs out of any ideological a priori class prejudice or other identity prerequisite, in substance, a community founded on “whatever singularity.”13 9. Mao Zedong cited in the speech he pronounced during the Seventh Congress of CPC, June 11, 1945, this legend, which will become, after 1949, the official allegory of socialist construction. 10. Cf. the credo expressed by the omnipresent slogan: “Man will triumph over nature” or “Man can conquer nature” [Ren ding sheng tian 人定勝天]. 11. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937). 12. Ge Fei, “Chengbao de xushi fenxi” 城堡的敘事分析 [Analysis of the narratives in the castle], in Sairen de gesheng 塞壬的歌聲 [The siren songs] (Shanghai, Wenyi chubanshe, 2001), 135–59. 13. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community: Theory of Whatever Singularity, trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
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Ge Fei underscores the social dimension of this human-based utopia. The encounter and the friendship between Tan Gongda and Yao Peipei step toward the necessary coexistence that would be able to protect the “zoe,” or the “bare life,” of the people against any kind of exclusion, in favor of the “bios” form favorable to its inclusion. Their common struggle against the stigmata of class heredity reveals a horizontal “philia,” antithetical to the vertical “People-one” imposed by the party-state. It revives what communism has occulted by the oblivion of its own invention: the existence of the common,14 characterized by the necessity of being together and living together. Nevertheless, such a commonality defies the myth of the symbiotic community as it commands the division of the social. Tan Gondga’s atavist “foolishness” and Yao Peipei’s impermeable sensitivity prove their irreducible personality and strength, which confirm this part of otherness preserved from any political absorption into a paradoxical game of proximity/separation. This common world accompanied by differentiation sketches a kind of libertarian democracy, which claims the irrevocable retreat of the state in favor of the endless division of the social,15 in other words, a “place of power vacuum,” which is unlocalizable and definable only by social mobility and plurality. It is meaningful that from volume to volume the “Great Unity” dream seems to be fading to the advantage of the “Peach Blossom Spring” dream, which is no longer a synonym of harmonious totality but of a deliberate marginality and reluctant action. Far away from a constituted community it is an emerging one, inoperative and undetermined,16 as the liberty that the unfortunate couple aspires to is as fugitive and enchanting as flowing water, shimmering light, or wildflowers.
The Utopian Man The psychic and ethical aspect, previously underlined, is followed by the aesthetic preoccupations that appear to be salient in the last volume. The choice of an elegiac tone, served by the poet Duanwu 端午, Tan Gongda’s son, “loser” and aesthete, tend to exhibit a fin-de-siècle pessimism facing the growing commodity society promising the consumerist paradise. However, within this negative utopia remains a glimmer of hope, as the “obsolete man” is intricately a “utopian man” who is capable of preserving individual integrity from this new form of alienation while resisting to the reclusive misanthropic impulse and answering the call for the “unavowable community.”17 More than in the previous volumes, Huajiashe is given a diabolized frame for its third avatar, which is clearly designed as a dreadful universe, excluding any redemptive countermodel. In the mirror of devastating neoliberalism and of moral disintegration, Huajiashe is represented as a brothel and a “money-squandering den” (xiaojin ku 銷金窟) (75, 293–302). This “sweet and rich village” (wenrou fugui xiang 溫柔富貴鄉) is a worthy “Eden” (Yidi yuan 伊迪園) (76, 308), whose only virtue is summarized by Zhang Youde 張有德, its founder, in a laconic trisyllabic phrase: “the money comes in fast” (lai qian kuai 來錢快). It is not surprising that in a reconstituted Disneyland-like decorum, 14. Jean-Luc Nancy, La communauté affrontée (Paris: Galilée, 2001), 38. 15. Miguel Abensour, “Utopie et démocratie” [Utopia and democracy], Raison présente 121 (1997): 38–39. 16. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). 17. Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community [Communauté inavouable], trans. Pierre Joris (New York: Station Hill Press, 1988).
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young village women endorse multiple roles as guide, actress, and prostitute, satisfying any costumer in search of debauched pleasure. Nevertheless, the author rejects any countermodel facing such a sheer hell as he deplores several referential utopian communities. Neither Huaxi village in Jiangsu (Jiangsu Huaxi cun 江蘇華西村) nor The Little Ridge village in Anhui (Anhui Fengyang Liyuan gongshe Xiaogang cun 安徽鳳 陽梨園公社小崗村),18 both evoked on the same page, provides the example to follow because of their fallacious prosperity made in the service of propaganda (76). Even the sanctuary Lüzhu 綠珠 seeks in Yunnan along with her friends is described as just resulting from fantasies about touristic escape. Ge Fei remains too influenced by Flaubert’s unclassifiable novel Bouvard and Pécuchet to succumb to the temptation of any achieved utopia. The internment of Yuanqing 元慶, Duanwu’s stepbrother, in the psychiatric hospital he constructed himself in the hope of creating in the very site a haven from external aggression formulates a heavy irony. The author renews his human-centered reflections by the double refusal of capitalist dystopia and its alternatives. Unlike previous volumes, Ge Fei here resorts to a quasi-didactic discourse to complement the narrative. He engages in the “classification of people”—that is one chapter’s title—by borrowing the viewpoints of characters. Two categories have been established in a vigorous antinomy in conformity with various moral criteria. On one hand there are “useful” people, called “new men” by Feng Yanhe 馮延鶴, cheif of the bureau of redaction of local chronicles (difangzhi bangongshi fuzeren 地方志辦公室負責人) and Duanwu’s confidant, as in the latter’s mind the former demonstrates a new opportunism by having taken control of the whole society for thirty years (200). In Lüzhu’s view, such successful, rich, cynical persons whom the very society has produced deserve in fact much more the name of “nonperson” 非人, as the young rebel refuses the euphemism to express her denial and hatred (228).19 On the other hand are ranged “useless persons,” a group Duanwu, our poet, is paradoxically proud to be a part of. Harshly judged by his wife, Jiayu 家玉, as a “loser,” a “superfluous” man dismissed by the society and “rotting at home day by day” (13), Duanwu deliberately opts for this idle lifestyle, which allows him to care about nothing, spending his time reading, sleeping, or listening to music (6–8). This intentional apathy unmistakably refers to Zhuangzi’s philosophy, on which Feng Yanhe has shed light through erudite and eccentric exegesis (13, 47).20 However, Feng Yanhe’s wisdom acquires a very critical 18. New village in Henan 河南新鄉(南街村)could be added to those two examples. 19. The term used by Lüzhu undoubtedly is inspired by Mencius: “From this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man, that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man, that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man, and that the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man,” James Legge, trans., The Works of Mencius (New York: Dover, 2002). In fact, the original text systematically uses the negative form to designate this category of “no-man.” Literally, we can read: “Who has not the feeling of commiseration is a no-man”(由是觀之,無惻隱之心,非人也; 無羞惡之心,非人也;無辭讓之心,非人也;無是非之心,非人也。). 20. Feng refers to Confucius, Zhuangzi, as well as Marx. For Confucius: “Junzi buqi” 君子不器 (The accomplished scholar is not a utensil). Cf. The Analects, http://ctext.org/analects/wei-zheng. For Zhuangzi, “Wuyongzhe wuyou, fan ruo buji zhi zhou” 無用者無憂,泛若不系之舟 [Those who are useless are not sad, and aimlessly wander about]. It is a modified quotation; The original text: “巧者勞而知者憂,無能 者無所求。飽食而遨游,泛若不系之舟,虛而遨游者也。” [The clever toil on, and the wise are sad. Those who are without ability seek for nothing. They eat to the full, and wander idly about. They drift like a vessel loosed from its moorings, and aimlessly wander about]. http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/lie-yu-kou. For the parody of Marx: “你只有先成為一個無用的人,才能最終成為你自己” [One could become himself only after making himself perfectly useless]. This parodies the famous slogan “無產階級只有解放全人 類,才能最終解放自己” [The proletariat could emancipate himself only after emancipating all humanity],
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and modern assertion while summarizing it: “one could not become himself but making himself perfectly useless,” as the uselessness in question is completely recontextualized in response to a society falling into decay. All these arguments related to current Chinese society and to traditional philosophy sound like weird echoes of the theory of “obsolete man,” such as it was formulated by Gunter Anders in the 1930s.21 Beyond the “superfluous man” invented in the nineteenth century by Turgenev alluding to a type of individual who does not fit into social norms despite possessing talent and capability, the “obsolete man” is inseparable from the “utopian man” as a critical concept serving to condemn the technical and materialist society. A “technical society,” and a fortiori a postindustrial one, is assimilated to the Land of Cokagne, which renders a “utopian man” “obsolete” while seeking to exterminate him since in such a society there is neither utopia nor future but just the present that is prolonged forever. Human beings are not allowed the dream anymore as this is nowadays reserved for the machine that dreams a megamachine instead. The more people attempt to improve the Land of Cokagne, in the belief that they are making their own happiness, the more they implement the utopia of the megamachine, contributing thus unconsciously to their proper extermination. Aware of this danger, Duanwu persists in choosing to be a “utopian man.” He is “conservative” against progress in the sense that he takes care to safeguard and to preserve the existing world and humanity.22 He strives to be given an “acosmic freedom,” not only by denying the world as it is but also by imagining a world that he deems he has right to. This capacity to refute the world as it is, such as the one he found when born, in order to dream up another one23 reasserts his human nature in distinguishing him from an animal that can only adapt itself to the environment. The alternative universe Duanwu envisions exists mostly in art, which not only expresses his willingness to be distanced from the present world but reveals his real utopian ethos, insofar as he refrains from substantializing the artistic antidote in considering it as an “ungroundable hope.”24 In this respect, Duanwu’s approach is both committed and “elitist.”
21.
22. 23. 24.
which itself summarizes Marx and Engles’s ideas. Cf. F. Engels, preface to the 1888 English Edition, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. “The exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggles.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf, p. 8. About the influence of Zhuangzi on modern Chinese writers, cf. Liu Jianmei, “To Join the Commune or Withdraw from It? A Reading of Yan Lianke’s ‘Shouhuo,’” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 19 (2007): 133. Günter Anders, L’obsolescence de l’homme [The obsolescence of humankind], vols. 1 and 2 (Paris: Encyclopédie des nuances, 2002; Paris: Ed. Fario, 2011). Also Cf. Patrick Vassort, L’homme superflu: Théorie politique de la crise en cours [The superflous man: The political theory on the ongoing crisis] (Neuvy-enChampagne: Le Passager clandestin, 2012). In Latin, conservere means “safeguard.” It is a Bergson’s view. Cf. Christophe David, “De l’homme utopique à l’utopie négative” [From the utopian man to the negative utopia], Mouvements 45/46 (2006): 135–36. “At the center of contemporary antinomies is that art must be and wants to be utopia, and the more utopia is blocked by the real functional order, the more this is true; yet at the same time, art may not be utopia in order not to betray it by providing semblance and consolation. If the utopia of art were fulfilled, it would be arts temporal end.” Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kenton (London: Continuum, 2004), 5.
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Art is a particular way the poet engages in social critique. Duanwu chooses to be a distanced witness, by following in Baudelaire’s footsteps, as he comes close to be a “chiffonier,” a term Walter Benjamin uses to qualify the French poet, inclined to “collect wastes of history.” The novel is thus filled with passages depicting fetid waters, muddy streets, or decaying plants. These images give rise to “flowers of evil,” tending to unearth beauty lying beneath ugliness. Therefore, the poet reaffirms his individuality in sublimating the aesthetic and the ethic dear to Baudelaire and Kafka as Duanwu tightly adheres to the ambivalent principle of spleen and ideal, while trying to find a glimmer from within obscurity.25 That is why a parallel aspect also features Duanwu’s posture: elitism, as shown by his musical taste. Does it translate into a form of escapism or even narcissism? Nothing could be less sure. Rather than a shelter offering calm and serenity, his artistic requirements respond to the utopian conception, as elaborated by Adorno. Certainly, a multitude of artistic references show a revolting and transgressive act that aims at preserving individuality against effects of reification, whether in terms of kitsch, mercantile dictatorship, or social utopia. However, art must be understood as truth rather than a substantialized remedy: by revealing that the current society lacks something, art itself could be drained of content to become an “ungroundable hope.” In this sense, Duanwu’s commentary about Zhai Yongming’s poem “The Sadness of a Submarine” is compelling, as he expresses reservations about its end, too assertive and confident in his view, while the world seems so complex that it is full of possibilities as well as unpredictability (195).26 The protagonist’s reluctance echoes the author’s reflection on Kafka’s quest: despite the latter’s great insight, “the way that leads to the redemption remains unclear.”27
Conclusion The last remark brings to light one of the most characteristic aspects of the trilogy in its framework of humanistic conception of utopia. Negative utopia28 clearly appears to be a prevailing theme illustrated by the constant vacillations between possibility and impossibility. The ambivalent mode that has developed through three generations’ destinies before reaching accentuated form stems from a despairing vision of utopia, as formulated by Adorno, for whom only despair can save us, for a double reason that paradoxically constitutes two essential conditions of all utopia: awareness of the lack that exists in the current society and the threat to the future.29 In this respect, Ge Fei’s fiction suggests that the utopia that the commodity society attempts to remove from 25. Ge Fei: “The hope is not on the fictive opposite of the darkness, but somewhere inside it.” (希望不在…… 黑暗的虛擬的對立面,而存在黑暗之中的某處). Sairen de gesheng 塞壬的歌聲 [Siren song] (Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe),159. 26. Cf. Zhai Yongming 翟永明: “I must make water, to create a rare beauty, for the sadness of everything” (現在我必須造水 為每一件事物的悲傷 製造它不可多得的完美). The Sadness of a Submarine (Qianshuiting de beishang《潜水艇的 悲傷 》), http://www.douban.com/group/topic/1401144/. 27. Ge Fei: “Although he (Kafka) illuminates every parts of the darkroom with his real insights, the way leading to the Redemption remains nebulous and unclear.” (儘管他的敏銳的洞察力照亮了暗房的一個個 局部,但通往獲救的途徑卻恍惚未明). Siren Song, 158. 28. Michael Löwy, “‘Theologia Negativa’ and ‘Utopia Negativa’: Franz Kafka,” in Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe, trans. Hope Heaney (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 71–94. 29. Adorno: “Car rien d’autre que le désespoir peut nous sauver” (Only the despair could save us). Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften [Collected writings] (Suhrkamp, 1970–1986), 450; cited from David Christophe,
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human preoccupations should come back precisely because of various threats whether they are political, cultural, or ecological. That is the reason the novel is caught between elegiac and anxiously prospective tones, leading the hesitation toward its paroxysm through the treatment of the issue of death.30 The final poem placed in the appendix could be read as an apostille, magnificently voicing the interpenetration of memory and desire.31 Dedicated to Jiayu, alias Xiurong 秀蓉, the poem initially entitled “The Moon above the Sacrificial Altar” (“Jitai shang de yueliang” 祭台上的月亮) is rebaptized “Lotus” (“Shuilian” 睡蓮). Rather than the Buddhist moral, it hints at the Ophelia myth, as revivified by the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting and by Arthur Rimbaud’s poetic text.32 Ge Fei sublimates the heroine’s death by transforming it into an allegory of absence/presence: “Present or absent, it is as undoubted as the moonlight” (376). The shift of the title is neither arbitrary nor futile. As it contains in Chinese the word “sleep” (shui 睡), it must make it possible to imagine that the beloved is dying upon the lotus like pictorial representations of Ophelia, comparable to Sleeping Beauty lying on the aquatic flower.33 Most importantly, death portrayed as dormition by an apparently nonchalant widower reveals the paradoxical dream, which is “expectation” and “hope” of the community (375), as though the demise of his wife extracts him from himself, with reference to what Georges Bataille describes as lack, excess, and ecstasy, calling for a redemptive “we.” To a certain extent, Ge Fei seems to rewrite Tristan and Iseult, since the protagonist experiences love by losing it, before it takes place. Such a community of lovers is ultimately a metaphor of faith in the coming community,34 which the novel suggests by interrogating our epoch threatened in its advent, where shaky possibilities of an enigmatic future remain.35 If utopia vanishes in the wasteland, the human horizon persists.36
Bibliography Abensour, Miguel. “Utopie et démocratie” [Utopia and democracy], Raison présente 121 (1997): 38–39. “Nous formons une équipe triste: Notes sur Günther Anders et Theodor W. Adorno,” Tumultes 28/29 (2007): 174. 30. Cf. Paola Iovene, “A Clean Place to Die: Fog, Toxicity, and Shame in Ends of Spring in Jiangnan,” in Tales of Futures Past, Anticipation and Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 135–62. 31. The influence of T. S. Elliot is palpable. Cf. the beginning of The Waste Land: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/waste-land. 32. Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems, trans. Oliver Bernard (New York: Penguin, 1962); http://www.mag4. net/Rimbaud/poesies/Ophelia.html. 33. The lotus is a fruit giving you a pleasant dreamy feeling after you eat it, according to ancient Greek stories. 34. The last message sent by Xiurong in agony: “I love you. For ever. If you believe it yet” (369). Duanwu’s poem is, in some extent, a response to this declaration of love. See Ge Fei, Shanhe rumeng, 369. 35. Cf. Blanchot, The Unavowable Community. The book provides a fine reading of Marguerite Duras’s novel, The Illness of the Death. 36. Another verse: “Fortunately, you are always there beside the waste land” (374). This coincides with David Wang’s assertion about the utopian subsistence from inside the waste land, in the abovementioned article.
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Adorno, T. W. Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kenton. London: Continuum, 2004. Adorno, T. W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community: Theory of Whatever Singularity. Translated by Michael Hardt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Anders, Günter. L’obsolescence de l’homme [The obsolescence of humankind]. Vols. 1 and 2. Paris: Encyclopédie des nuances, 2002; Paris: Ed. Fario, 2011.Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community [Communauté inavouable]. Translated by Pierre Joris. New York: Station Hill Press, 1988. Bloch, Ernest. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Translated by Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklunburg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. Chalier, Catherine. Lévinas: L’utopie de l’humain [The utopia of the human]. Paris: Albin Michel, 1993. David, Christophe. “De l’homme utopique à l’utopie négative” [From the utopian man to the negative utopia]. Mouvements 45/46 (2006). ———. “Nous formons une équipe triste: Notes sur Günther Anders et Theodor W. Adorno.” Tumultes 28/29 (2007): 174. Fourier, Charles. Le nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire ou les séries passionnées. Paris: Bossange Père, 1829. Gabel, Joseph. Ideologies and the Corruption of Thought. Edited by Alan Sica. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997. Ge Fei. “Chengbao de xushi fenxi” 城堡的敘事分析 [Analysis of the narratives in the castle]. In Sairen de gesheng 塞壬的歌聲 [The siren songs]. Shanghai, Wenyi chubanshe, 2001. ———. Chunjin Jiangnan 春盡江南 [End of spring in Jiangnan]. Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2011. ———. Renmian taohua 人面桃花 [Peach blossom beauty]. Shenyang: Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe, 2004. ———. Sairen de gesheng 塞壬的歌聲 [Siren song]. Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe. ———. Shanhe rumeng 山河入夢 [Landscapes in dream]. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2007. Iovene, Paola. “A Clean Place to Die: Fog, Toxicity, and Shame in Ends of Spring in Jiangnan.” In Tales of Futures Past, Anticipation and Ends of Literature in Contemporary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 135–62. Kinkley, Jeffrey C. Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Legge, James, trans. The Works of Mencius. New York: Dover, 2002. Lévinas, Emmanuel. “Utopia and Socialism.” In Alterity and Transcendence. Translated by Michael B. Smith. New York: Colombia University Press, 1999. Liu, Jianmei. “To Join the Commune or Withdraw from It? A Reading of Yan Lianke’s ‘Shouhuo.’” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 19 (2007). Löwy, Michael. “‘Theologia Negativa’ and ‘Utopia Negativa’: Franz Kafka.” In Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe. Translated by Hope Heaney. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Nancy, Jean-Luc. La communauté affrontée. Paris: Galilée, 2001. ———. The Inoperative Community. Translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Orwell, George. 1984. Signet Classics, 1961. Ruyer, Raymond. L’utopie et les utopistes. Paris: PUF, 1950. Vassort, Patrick. L’homme superflu: Théorie politique de la crise en cours [The superflous man : The political theory on the ongoing crisis]. Neuvy-en-Champagne: Le Passager clandestin, 2012. Wang, David Der-wer. “Wutuobang li de huangyuan—Ge Fei Chunjin jiangnan” 烏托邦裡的 荒原—格非《春盡江南》[The waste land within the utopia: About Ge Fei’s End of Spring in Jiangnan]. Dushu 讀書 [Read] 7 (2013): 51. Xu, Yuan Zhong, trans. Songs of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry. New York: Penguin Books in Association with New World Press, 1994.
8
The Spirit of Zhuangzi and the Chinese Utopian Imagination
Jianmei Liu
Our era has come to the end of utopia: disillusionment about “the perfect society” or a utopian world community ruled by universal agreement has prevailed in the contemporary Chinese literary imagination. If at the end of the Qing dynasty, “modern Chinese literature was born with a call for utopia,”1 marked by Liang Qichao’s novel The Future of New China (Xin Zhongguo weilai ji 新中國未來記) in 1902, then, at the end of the twentieth century, after a whole century’s strenuous effort to realize the revolutionary utopian dream resulted in disaster, Chinese writers became more fascinated with a dystopian imagination. For example, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses (Shouhuo 受活) and Ge Fei’s Southlands Trilogy (Jiangnan sanbuqu 江南三部曲, including Bygone Beauty [Renmian taohua 人面桃花], Land in Dreamland [Shanhe rumeng 山河入夢], and Southern Spring Played Out [Chunjin Jiangnan 春盡江南]) are representative dystopian novels that target the deconstruction not only of the Communist utopia but also the capitalist utopia of postmodern China. In Jeffrey C. Kinkley’s words, “A dystopian novel of the Chinese stream is one that conveys inexorable and unbounded social-moral decline, particularly if that decline was engendered by a would-be utopian social scheme.”2 What has come along with the end of utopia is the distrust of suprasocial justice, or a loss of faith in larger or higher sources of meaning, such as God, heaven, or Communist ideology. As a result, the yearning for a perfect society of justice and righteousness has been gradually transformed into a culture of indifference or nihilism in the post-Mao world. As Josep Ramoneda points out, “If totalitarianism is the annihilation of meaning, then the shape totalitarianism takes today is the culture of indifference.”3 Facing such a dystopian mood, one might wonder what has gone wrong with the utopian impulse, the hope of overcoming an oppressive reality and constructing a perfect and just society. The Communist utopian dream of social harmony has become a tool of hegemonic power to suppress individual expression and heterogeneous ideas 1. Please see David Der-wei Wang’s chapter in this volume. 2. Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 20. 3. Josep Ramoneda, “At the End of Utopia—Indifference,” in Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought, ed. Patricia Vieira and Michael Marder (New York: Continuum, 2012), 119.
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and voices. Can we find an alternative spiritual resource to overcome the nihilism and indifference engendered by a dystopian mode? Was the Chinese utopian imagination based on Zhuangzi’s spirit able to provide a different perspective from which to reconfigure a world free of suffering and beneficial to human fulfillment? Most utopian visions since the late Qing period, such as Kang Youwei’s famous Book of Great Unity (Datong shu 大同書), combine the Confucian utopian model found in the Records of Rites with the Western evolutionary way of thinking.4 However, in those utopian ideals of a better future in which equality, unity, and harmony for all humanity are to be achieved, individuality and the rights of the individual have always been subjugated to collectivity and social reform. To grasp more precisely what may be at stake, this chapter analyzes modern Chinese utopian imagination inspired by Zhuangzi’s spirit, which emphasizes individuality, freedom, and nature. On the surface, Zhuangzi’s spirit may seem irrelevant to the utopian imagination, yet it perfectly complements what has been lacking in the modern utopian dream—individual spiritual liberation that resists any despotism of humanity and a more tolerant and multifaceted cultural mentality that fights against the unification of thought.
Zhuangzi’s Spirit and Berlin’s Negative Freedom The two central philosophical themes of Zhuangzi—absolute spiritual freedom as presented in the chapter “Free and Easy Wandering” (“Xiaoyao you” 逍遙遊) and the rejection of absolute and fixed views on right and wrong as seen in the chapter “On the Equality of Things” (“Qiwu lun” 齊物論)—have been constantly reinterpreted and appropriated by modern Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century.5 The dilemma that the survival of these two important ideas presents best testifies to the inner struggle of modern Chinese intellectuals, who have to live under the collective utopian dream of Communist China. In a cultural environment in which Chinese writers remain preoccupied with their “obsession with China” (C. T. Hsia’s term),6 the pursuit of individual freedom, and more tolerant and multilayered cultural identities, has been relentlessly downplayed, suppressed, or criticized. However, Zhuangzi’s advocacy of the absolute individual spirit can become a rich philosophical resource for aesthetic utopian and personal utopian imaginations, and his questioning of any fixed opinions concerning “right” and “wrong” can help us understand the all-encompassing Way (dao 道) that denotes the spirit of tolerance of potentially conflicting and incommensurable values, offering a more human and liberal way of imagining the utopian world. In his famous essay “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Isaiah Berlin makes the distinction between “positive freedom,” which insists on the wish to be one’s own master, and “negative freedom,” which encompasses “the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.”7 Echoing libertarians such as Locke and Mill in England and Constant and Tocqueville in France, Berlin holds that a certain minimum area of personal freedom cannot be violated. In other words, a substantial minimum area of negative freedom that cannot be trespassed upon by the state, the nation, or any 4. See Zhang Longxi’s chapter in this volume. 5. Please see my book Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 6. C. T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 3rd ed., intro. by David Der-wei Wang (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 533–34. 7. Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 169.
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other authority is essential to a human being. “By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others. The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom.”8 Instead of emphasizing the absence of interference, positive freedom means having control over one’s life; but, according to Berlin, it sometimes “may be inflated into some super-personal entity—a state, a class, a nation, or the march of history itself, regarded as a more ‘real’ subject of attributes than the empirical self.”9 By distinguishing negative and positive liberty, Berlin is targeting moral monism, which presupposes a single pattern, a blueprint, “a final solution” for a utopian society—a kind of ultimate premise of modern systems of authoritarianism.10 As he points out: Pluralism, with the measure of “negative” liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of “positive” self-mastery by classes, or people, or the whole of mankind. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognize the fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another.11
Being suspicious of a single seamless system of value, Berlin urges us to affirm pluralism and eschew the unitary value that can be seen in utopianism and authoritarianism. Advocating pluralism, he in fact encourages us to embrace potentially conflicting and incommensurable values regardless of “higher” or “lower” goals, as well as their origins in the modern right or left wing of politics. Zhuangzi’s idea of absolute spiritual freedom differs in important respects from the Western tradition of freedom. Berlin’s differentiation between positive freedom and negative freedom is about rights within political and legal systems, whereas Zhuangzi’s work is related to individual existence as well as an aesthetic spirit not confined to the context of rights.12 However, instead of viewing Berlin’s negative freedom and Zhuangzi’s spiritual freedom as mutually exclusive, Liu Xiaogan in his book The Philosophy of Zhuangzi and Its Transformation not only has discovered the possibilities of conjunction and transformation between them but also has given Zhuangzi’s concept of freedom a unique vantage point through which one is able to actively attain an infinite freedom in the world of consciousness, larger and more positive than Berlin’s request for a minimal area of freedom.13 According to Liu Xiaogan, while the persistent and unremitting effort to survive in a harsh environment is by all means worth affirming, we nevertheless have no right to force everyone to be a fighter like Don Quixote or to be a martyr and give up the freedom of choosing Zhuangzi’s way of contentment on the spiritual level. Such a choice has its own legitimacy and should be understood 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Ibid., 170. Ibid., 181. Ibid., 212. Ibid., 216. Lin Gang discusses the difference between Berlin’s two concepts of freedom and Zhuangzi’s concept of freedom: “Isaiah Berlin differentiated between positive freedom and negative freedom, but what he called negative freedom is undifferentiated from an ordinary discussion of rights within political and legal systems. But what is called freedom in Zhuangzi and Chan Buddhist tests is never discussed in the context of rights. It is not freedom in the sense of a political and legal system. Of course, freedom may relate to political and legal systems, but more importantly it points to existential issues of real individuals in life.” See Lin Gang, “Toward an Aesthetics of Freedom,” in Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writing, ed. Michael Lackner and Nikola Chardonnens (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 131. 13. Liu Xiaogan, Zhuangzi zhexue jiqi yanbian 莊子哲學及其演變 [The philosophy of Zhuangzi and its transformation] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2010), 347–58.
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or sympathized with, or at least not condemned, whether it is made under abnormal social conditions or during a peaceful period.14 In the field of artistic and literary creation, I also see certain affinities between Zhuangzi’s philosophy of “not being enslaved by things” (不為物役) and Berlin’s concept of negative freedom, a connection that implies Zhuangzi’s significant applicability to a modern time in which individuals are coerced by a tyrannical doctrine in the name of one ultimate goal or ideal. Not being enslaved or controlled by things refers to a free and unfettered life, distant from politics, the state, social institutions, and human relationships that continually manipulate and hinder the individual. In its resistance to coercion and enslavement by outside factors, Zhuangzi’s philosophy resonates with Berlin’s negative freedom, which responds to some modern and contemporary problematics. Zhuangzi’s relevance to modern times lies exactly in the protection of individual liberty from external restraint. In this sense, it is similar to negative freedom, which demands a space of noninterference by other people in which “one should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be.”15 In the modern world, Zhuangzi by and large not only represents an aesthetic spirit and a life philosophy but also points to social and political dimensions of freedom, albeit on a symbolic level. It compels us to ponder whether a person should have the right to independence, the right to roam, the right to noninterference by others, the right not to do something (yousuo buwei 有所不為), and the right to keep silent or live a reclusive life without participating in social reform or revolution—all crucial for artists and writers to maintain their personal voices and for free literary and artistic creation. In the context of modern Chinese literature, such a request for negative freedom, the right of noninterference or noncoercion by others, has usually been ignored or suppressed by modern authoritarianism, which depends on positive freedom—derived from the wish for self-mastery and self-determination but often historically twisted and channeled into a bigger cause, the emancipation of the nation. Therefore, whether to be a fighter, a savior of the nation, or just an individual with an authentic voice was constantly debated in the literary field of modern China. One of the most striking features of the history of modern Chinese literature has been the downplaying or even the invalidation of the right of roaming or negative freedom. Especially during the revolutionary years, Chinese writers were forced to become fighters to save either the people or the nation under political and social pressure, and, as a consequence, their personal voices were turned into the mouthpiece of a political party or of a class or group. One may argue that the freedom of an individual must be embedded in and is inseparable from freedom in a collective and political sense, as in Hu Shi’s statement that “the big I” (大我) and “the small I” (小我) are always intertwined with each other.16 Whether in the revolutionary era or in a liberal democratic society, individual freedom has been closely tied to a politics that requires individuals to take on social responsibilities and serve their community, society, and nation. Such an argument can be understood as an extension of positive liberty, which according to Berlin is a “valid universal goal.”17 However, “the rhetoric of ‘positive’ liberty, at least in its distorted form, is in far greater evidence, and continues to play its historical role (in both capitalist and 14. Ibid. 15. Berlin, Liberty, 169.
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anti-capitalist societies) as a cloak for despotism in the name of a wider freedom.”18 For Berlin, positive liberty is divided between two selves: the “higher,” “real,” or “ideal” self associated with reason and the “lower,” “empirical,” or “heteronomous” self associated with irrational desire and passion.19 In the name of the “true” or “real” self that aims to achieve a “higher” level of freedom, the empirical self, or the person’s actual desires and wishes, remains constantly vulnerable to being suppressed by or forfeited to authoritarian ideologies. As in the history of modern China, especially during the revolutionary era, at stake is not the lack of positive freedom but rather the vulnerability of negative freedom—an individual is not allowed to be negatively free to do as he or she pleases. For almost a century, a Chinese writer has had the right to be a savior of or a fighter for their nation, the spokesperson of the people, or the embodiment of social consciousness; but he or she has not held the right to roam, to be an outsider and a hermit, or to not fight for and participate in national salvation. As Gao Xingjian wrote, “During the years when Mao Zedong implemented total dictatorship even fleeing was not an option. The monasteries on faraway mountains that provided refuge for scholars in feudal times were totally ravaged, and to write even in secret was to risk one’s life.”20 The moral monism on which revolutionary ideology was based invalidated the coexistence of positive freedom and negative freedom in the literary field, depriving Chinese writers of a choice between being a savior and enlightener of the people and being a normal and frail person who prefers to retreat into personal space. As a result, the modern utopian imagination that emphasizes changing and revolutionizing the world has greatly overwhelmed another kind of utopian imagination inspired by Zhuangzi’s philosophy, which focuses more on the aesthetic spirit, individual freedom, and the antialienation of the outer world, as well as a healthy relationship between human and nature. By questioning any fixed views on “right and wrong,” Zhuangzi in the modern world not only symbolically echoes negative freedom but also reflects the problematic of a modern utopian imagination that lacks the spirit of high tolerance for multiple values. In a chapter entitled “On the Equality of Things,” Zhuangzi questioned the intellectual conflicts of his time, especially the different judgments of “rightness” and “wrongness” made by Confucianists and Mohists.21 For Zhuangzi, all such debates have ulterior motives behind them, prescribed by special circumstances and positions. In Benjamin Schwartz’s words, “It is not that the perspectives of Confucius or Mo-tzu may not have some truth when applied to certain situations, but their effort to encompass 18. Ibid. 19. Berlin wrote, “Presently the two selves may be represented as divided by an ever larger gap; the real self may be conceived as something wider than the individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a Church, a State, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn.” Berlin, Liberty, 179–80. 20. Gao Xingjian, Cold Literature, trans. Gilbert C. F. Fong and Mabel Lee (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005), 15. 21. Zhuangzi was skeptical of the notion of fixed principles of “right and wrong”: “‘This’ is also ‘that’; ‘that’ is also ‘this.’ ‘This’ implies a concept of right and wrong; ‘that’ also implies a concept of right and wrong. But is there really a ‘this’ and a ‘that’? Or is there really no ‘this’ and no ‘that’? Where ‘this’ and ‘that’ cease to be opposites, there lies the pivot of the Way. Only when the pivot is located in the center of the circle of things can we respond to their infinite transformations. The transformations of ‘right’ are infinite and so are the transformations of ‘wrong.’ Therefore, it is said that nothing is better for responding to them than lucidity.” See Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi], Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Takes and Parables of Chuang Tzu, trans. Victor H. Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 15–16.
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the infinite ocean of circumstances and perspectives with their own ‘rightness’ and to find moral and intellectual ‘wrongness’ everywhere is as much a manifestation of the self-assertive and isolating heart/mind as is the monomaniacal ambition of the tyrant.”22 Indeed, instead of agreeing with any fixed opinions concerning “right” and “wrong,” Zhuangzi advocated the all-encompassing Way (dao 道) that can contain and understand both of these opposites. The Way that Zhuangzi suggested implicitly signifies the spirit of tolerance, embracing conflicting and heterogeneous values—which has been largely ignored in the utopian imaginations in modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
Zhou Zuoren’s New Village: Against Unification in Thought Apparently, Zhuangzi’s concept of individual freedom had an extensive and profound influence on Zhou Zuoren, who overtly and firmly emphasized “ontological individualism in the worldly place” in his famous article “Human Literature” (“Rende wenxue” 人的文學). In Zhou’s own words, “The humanism that I talked about is starting from the individual. To talk about humanism and love for all human beings, one must first gain the qualification of being a human, and having a human’s position.”23 By regarding each person’s rights as the precondition for humanism, Zhou Zuoren powerfully demonstrates that individualism is crucial to all aspects of human existence. Such an argument, prioritizing individualism as the starting point for social reform, was perfectly epitomized by the “New Village,” a small utopian community initiated by Japanese novelist Mushakoji Saneatsu, who launched the journal New Village to advocate “New village–ism” (xincun zhuyi 新村主義) in 1918. Infatuated with Mushakoji Saneatsu’s utopian idea, Zhou Zuoren published an article entitled “New Village in Japan” (“Riben de xincun” 日本的新村) in New Youth in 1919, praising the new village movement as a feasible ideal. In Zhou’s own words, “The new village movement goes one step further, promoting a life of labor and collaboration. In one way, it has fulfilled its obligations toward human beings; in another way, it has completed personal duties to oneself. It eulogizes not only collaboration but also individuality; it develops not only the common spirit but also the spirit of freedom. It is indeed a practical and feasible ideal, and a blessing for normal people.”24 In July 1919, Zhou Zouren went to Japan to experience real life in the “new village,” participating in collaborative labor with other Japanese new village members for a few days and gaining enormous joy through such “a happy human life” that it allowed him to transcend the rightness and wrongness that existed in the mundane world. After he came back to China, he began to enthusiastically introduce such a utopian model to Chinese readers by publishing a series of articles and giving public lectures, which successfully aroused “a passion for [the] new village” that attracted even Zhou Enlai, who became the prime minister of New China in 1949. Zhou Zuoren briefly recorded in his diary that Mao Zedong visited his home in Beijing in 1920 to consult him about
22. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985), 231. 23. Zhou Zuoren, “Rende wenxue” 人的文學 [Human literature], in Yishu yu shenghuo 藝術與生活 [Arts and life], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren] (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 11–12. 24. Zhou Zuoren, “Riben de xincun” 日本的新村 [The New Village in Japan], New Youth (April 1919).
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the details of such a utopian model.25 However, although Mao Zedong’s concept of the “people’s commune” (renmin gongshe 人民公社), which was put into practice all over China in the 1950s, absorbed some new village elements such as collaborative labor and equality, it largely abandoned the essence of the utopian model of the village, which is to respect individuals’ rights and differences. “The ideal new village, the reasonable society of the future, should on the one hand belong to mankind, and on the other hand emphasize the individual.”26 This kind of humanism truly represents the May Fourth spirit of enlightenment, but it was callously cast into oblivion after the grandscale “people’s commune” was launched in New China. What Zhou Zuoren requested was analogous to “a certain minimum area of personal freedom” that Locke, Mill, and Berlin all believed is essential to human liberty. An ideal and harmonious new village in which every individual can freely express his or her ideas is equivalent to Berlin’s definition of negative freedom, which demands an area within which a person can act freely without being enslaved. Zhou Zuoren’s propagation of the “new village” concept was severely questioned and criticized, even by Hu Shi, who hierarchically subordinated a “small self” to the “greater self.”27 In 1920, Hu Shi ruthlessly denounced the concept of a “new village,” because he saw a hidden affinity between such a utopian community and the traditional reclusive life of escapism, which fails to confront the backwardness of Chinese reality. In addition, it focuses too much on individualism, which in his mind would discourage youths from engaging in positive social reform. Immediately joining the debate, Zhou Zuoren again claimed that “reforming society has to begin from reform of the individual” and the most valuable form of the new village adopts peaceful means instead of the violent means of revolution. In an important article entitled “The Ideal and Practice of the New Village” (“Xincun de lixiang yu shiji” 新村的理想與實際), published in 1920, Zhou Zuoren meticulously imparts the utopian ideal of “New Village” by restating his definition of humanism with intense appeals for protecting and tolerating individual uniqueness: The ideal life of a human in the new village is in a world where sameness shows in a big way and differences show in a small way. As for the material life, it is the same; but the spiritual life can be free. In terms of mankind, everyone is the same; but in terms of the individual, everyone can be different, and it is good to be different. Various countries, various places, various families, various persons—as long as everyone is aware that he is part of humanity, understands and helps others, and allows families and individuals from other countries to develop their specialties, then they should be welcome.28
In his description of this utopian society, Zhou Zuoren highlights its foundation: people who respect individual spiritual freedom and tolerate different cultures and ideas. He emphasizes material life’s sameness, whereas spiritual life can be free and different. 25. Zhao Hong, Zhongguoren de wutuobang zhimeng: xincun zhuyi zai Zhongguo de chuanbo yu fazhan 中國人的烏 托邦之夢:新村主義在中國的傳播與發展 [The Chinese utopian dream: The propagation and development of New Village-ism in China] (Taibei: Duli zuojia, 2014), 12–30. 26. Ibid. 27. Susan Daruvala has a detailed discussion about how Hu Shi’s definition of individualism differs from that of Zhou Zuoren, who considers the individual as the starting point of social change. See Daruvala, Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center, 2000), 51–52. 28. Zhou, “Xincun de lixiang yu shiji” 新村的理想與實際 [The ideal and practice of the New Village], in Yishu yu shenghuo, 216.
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In the ideal society of new village, in which fame and money have lost their value, everyone has a peaceful and harmonious relationship with each other, and they enjoy a pure and genuine working life. Their material life is as simple as possible, but their spiritual life is expected to be as rich as possible, not only promoting innovative artistic creation but also encouraging various religions. More importantly, Zhuangzi’s view of the uniformity of all things is loudly echoed in Zhou Zuoren’s famous idea of tolerance (kuanrong 寬容).29 Zhou Zuoren particularly abhors the kind of hypocritical “great harmony” (datong 大同) that is based on despotic dictatorship: If in the name of datong someone suppresses special and different cultures and thoughts, then it is a new kind of despotism, which we should not have. Datong is completely different from unification (tongyi 統一). The unification of cultures and ideas is not only impossible but also unbearable. If there appears a kind of unified world in which everyone names each other with numbers, talks and acts the same, knows only what everyone else knows and doesn’t know what everyone else doesn’t know, then even if evolution can be expected, the monotonous and oppressive life itself is painful enough.30
Zhou Zuoren has envisaged the danger of imposing one way of life or one utopian pattern for the future, which depends at a deeper level on the moral monism that demands the sacrifice of the individual as well as the differences among individuals for the better future of society. This unification that presupposes a single and universal model overriding the others can be seen in Communist society, in which an individual’s field of choice was narrowed and disciplined because of his or her propensity to seek alternatives. Predicting the peril of such uniformity based on moral monism, Zhou Zuoren calls for a spirit of tolerance that is capable of accommodating all different and incommensurable ideas and identities—a spirit that admittedly has been emasculated in modern Chinese history. The scholar Ha Yingfei has given a nice summary of Zhou Zuoren’s thought: Admitting difference; protecting the minority; tolerating dissidents; objecting to orthodoxy, dictatorship, and arbitrary acts; engaging in the construction of a modern rationality of multiple values; deconstructing the traditional unitary way of thinking and the psychology of idolization are the notable characteristics of Zhou Zuoren’s thought. Or we should say, Zhou Zuoren’s idea of negating absolute authority is interconnected with Zhuangzi’s relativism and agnosticism as well as Buddhism’s theory of origin.31
Influenced by Zhuangzi’s “On the Equality of Things,” Zhou Zuoren is emphatic about tolerance and interrogates the idea of one universal truth in ethics and art because 29. Qian Mu thinks that Zhuangzi points out the limitations of human perception and the relativity of values: “Everything that has feeling and usefulness must have its own standard and Dao, therefore everything is equal and free.” Fang Dongmei also thinks Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun contains a real concept of equality: “I found a common basic position from here, which is that normal people, big bird, and philosopher, as well as everyone else, are equal.” Instead of emphasizing Zhuangzi’s insight about “freedom,” as Li Zehou does in his History of Ancient Chinese Thought, both Qian Mu and Fang Dongmei focus more on the idea of equality presented in Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun, in which absolute universal moral values and standards are questioned. See Qian Mu, Zhuanglao tongbian 老莊通辯 [The general distinction between Laozi and Zhuangzi] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2002), 113; Fang Dongmei, Fang Dongmeiji 方東美集 [The collection of Fang Dongmei], ed. Huang Kejian and Zhong Xiaolin (Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe, 1993), 298. 30. Ibid. 31. Ha Yingfei, “Lun Zhou Zuoren de daojia lichang” 論周作人的道家立場 [On Zhou Zuoren’s daoist position], Guizhou shehui kexue 7 (2008): 114–18.
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of our limited knowledge and perceptions. He especially appreciates the judgment of his former mentor Zhang Taiyan: “Zhuangzi is capable of loyalty (zhong 忠) and forgiveness (shu 恕), and his so-called equating everything (qiwu 齊物) brings up both loyalty and forgiveness.”32 In other words, the loyalty and forgiveness (zhongshu 忠 恕) that Zhang Taiyan describes are equivalent to tolerance, which transcends binary oppositions of positive and negative. In the afterword of The Theory and Interpretation of Equating All Things (Qiwu lunshi 齊物論釋), Zhang Taiyan points out, “Equating all things is about equality, with which universal love and great harmony cannot compare. When we abandon both fame and image, the difference is automatically eliminated, and the pure and the polluted are both forgotten; therefore no truth is established. Only when things are not the same can sameness be reached.”33 He reveals that Zhuangzi’s concept of equality transcends the binary of the pure and the polluted, refusing to identify with a single and absolute truth; instead, it tolerates various big and small facts in the whole world, and such a spirit of tolerance is the quintessence of “On the Equality of Things.” For scholars such as Cui Dahua, Zhang Taiyan’s interpretation is “neither relativism on an experimental level, nor a compromise of opposed thoughts, but a deep philosophical observation that forms an understanding and tolerant attitude toward different thoughts.”34 That is to say, by looking at the world from the perspective of the universe, Zhuangzi’s “On the Equality of Things” contains a tolerant attitude and the genuine concept of equality, which includes multiple and different worlds without being obsessed with a single and absolute value judgment, and thus prevents arbitrariness of thought and one-sidedness. Influenced by Zhang Taiyan’s interpretation of Zhuangzi, Zhou Zuoren stated as early as the 1920s that “tolerance is the necessary condition for the development of the arts.”35 He explains, “The reason for intolerance is that one insists on his own judgmental rights but doesn’t acknowledge other people’s; a literary person believes too much in his own school, regarding it as the only dao.”36 Since he firmly objects to the unification of thought, considering it the murder of art, he repeats his criticism of intolerance in his essay “The Unification of Arts” (“Wenyi de tongyi” 文藝的統一): “The above words, which are all accurate, are enough to prove that the unification of arts should not happen and is impossible, but a school of critics, in the name of society and mankind, has established an orthodox social literature, practicing a kind of unification invisibly.”37 Disagreeing that all kinds of literature should be united under the banner of “art for life’s sake,” he calls for allowing the existence of individual arts and literature that belong to “art for art’s sake.” In another article, “The Different Things in the Arts” (“Wenyi de yiwu” 文藝的異物), he further expresses the idea of tolerating differences and even heresy: “The thought of different things in art is the same. I think everyone should have his own ideas, but at the same time he must have an encompassing heart 32. Zhang Taiyan, houxu 後序 [afterword] to Qiwulun shi 齊物論釋 [The theory and interpretation of equating all things]. In Shijia lun Zhuang 十家論莊 [Ten experts talking about Zhuangzi], ed. Hu Daojing (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2008), 451. 33. Ibid., 412–51. 34. Cui Dahua, Zhuangxue yanjiu 莊學研究 [The Studies of Zhuangzi] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1992), 542. 35. Zhou Zuoren, “Yishushang de kuanrong” 藝術上的寬容 [The tolerance of arts], in Ziji de yuandi 自己的園 地 [My own garden], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji, 8. 36. Ibid. 37. Zhou Zuoren, “Wenyi de tongyi” 文藝的統一 [The unification of arts], in Ziji de yuandi, in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji, 25.
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and the spirit of understanding to appreciate all kinds of products, and only by doing so can he understand the real meaning of art. . . . As a literary person, I think the reason literature is respectful is that its highest achievement is to ease all kinds of boundaries and distances.”38 Indebted to Zhuangzi’s spirit, about how to transcend right and wrong, limits and distances, Zhou Zuoren’s concept of tolerance—which aims to embrace differences and respect others, questioning the absolute truth—not only points strongly to the literary field that lacked tolerance at the time but also foresees the long-term hazard of modern authoritative thought that upholds monism. The writer Shu Wu comments, “As early as the 1920s, Zhou Zuoren objected to using the political movement to suppress individual thought. He predicted that even if this movement did not involve you, it would involve you in the future. No one has insurance. The ‘Cultural Revolution’ that happened half a century later proved Zhou Zuoren’s words right.”39 However, it was hard to be a modern Zhuangzi when Chinese intellectuals were expected to fulfill socially prescribed duties and obligations. It was also impossible to ignore right and wrong when reality was full of darkness and struggles. The case of Zhou Zuoren, who unfortunately degenerated into a Japanese collaborator, demonstrates that his dream of Zhuangzi was doomed to be dispelled under the historical condition of national crisis. In addition, his misery during the Cultural Revolution attests that there was no cultural space for his ideal of the new village, which underscores individuality and tolerance in modern China, at a time when Chinese intellectuals were caught up in the collective dream of building a unified Communist society.
Lin Yutang’s The Unexpected Island: Following the Nature Lin Yutang’s long novel The Unexpected Island, written in 1955, is a unique modern utopian novel that expresses his vision of an ideal world, drawn from both Western and Eastern cultures and philosophies. Different from the dream of the “peach blossom spring” that expresses only the unitary traditional Chinese utopian imagination, this novel integrates Chinese Daoist culture and ancient Greek culture, creating an imagined community with universal human values as well as a deep criticism of the modern industrial society and material world, completely transgressing political and cultural boundaries. The opinions expressed in this novel targeting the problems of modern life remain as chillingly relevant today as they were at the time of its writing. The Unexpected Island is set in 2004, when an American surveyor, Miss Eurydice, accidentally lands on an unknown and isolated island in the mid-Pacific and discovers that it is not only a European colony but also a modern “peach blossom land” that keeps itself insulated from the chaotic outside world. On this beautiful, quiet, and charming island, which is like a fairy-tale setting, every inhabitant is happy, self-sufficient, highly educated, and living a free and laissez-faire life. Not knowing that World War III and World War IV have already happened and many countries are ruined, they simply live happily in an isolated and heavenly world. Like Record of Peach Blossom Spring, in which 38. Zhou Zuoren, “Wenyishang de yiwu” 文藝上的異物 [The different things in the arts]. In Ziji de yuandi, in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji, 30. 39. Shu Wu, Zhou Zuoren de shifei gongguo 周作人的是非功過 [The merits and demerits of Zhou Zuoren] (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000), 133.
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a paradise is discovered through a fisherman’s random adventure, The Unexpected Island reveals a poetic utopia through Miss Eurydice’s adventure; the difference is that the fisherman can no longer go back to the Peach Blossom Land after he leaves, whereas Miss Eurydice eventually decides to stay on the island after careful observation and consideration. As in other utopian novels, the setting of The Unexpected Island is a “nowhere” place, infused with Lin Yutang’s personal imaginings and ideals of humanity. On this other shore, Lin Yutang provides an alternative or resistant dimension to reflect the darkness and unfairness of reality, trying to rebuild confidence and hope for the future of mankind. Although the novel seems to escape from the world fraught with conflicts, suffering, and cruelty, it in fact contains very profound significance in its criticism of modern reality. There are at least two time concepts in The Unexpected Island. The first is the time of looking back, returning to the continuous cycle of nature; by doing so, the inhabitants of the island never need to pursue progress in technology or industry and are content to only live in a beautiful natural environment with a carefree and content, leisurely lifestyle. Similar to the Daoist concept of a “small country and few inhabitants,” a time and place of stillness originally derived from the ancient tale of Peach Blossom Land, according to a time scheme that is exactly opposite to the modern time of historical progress. Second, this time frame simultaneously points to the future, because the novel takes place in 2004; like George Orwell’s 1984, it looks at the history of humankind from the perspective of the future, giving allegorical meaning to the reflection of modern society in which economic exploitation or social and political oppression has twisted human nature. As one of the most important utopian novels in modern Chinese literary history that conspicuously criticizes modernity, which of course has a lot to do with the discursive context within which Lin Yutang was writing, The Unexpected Island conveys human understanding that is universal and timeless, common to all people in all places and at all times. Although a skeptical attitude toward modern urban culture is expressed in Shen Congwen’s Border Town (Biancheng) and Fei Ming’s Bridge (Qiao) through their poetic eulogies to pastoral life, no other modern Chinese writer is like Lin Yutang, who launched a comprehensive and strong attack on modern industrial civilization and the concept of progress by combining ancient Western and ancient Chinese cultural resources. Lin Yutang is a distinctive cosmopolitan who pursues universal values and whose thoughts on cultural philosophy and world civilization transcend the boundaries of nations as well as history. His targets of criticism are modern men who are trapped in industrial and technological civilization and modern concepts that have been detrimental to people’s welfare. Different from Lu Xun, whose criticism of national character points to only one race and one country, Lin Yutang addresses the whole of humankind’s living and cultural conditions in which members of modern societies, both capitalist and Communist, have lost individuality and personal freedom and are oppressed by a technologized, materialistic, and politicized status quo. The spokesperson for Lin Yutang in The Unexpected Island is Laos, a philosopher and the spiritual leader of this special island. He has diagnosed the mental disease that pervades modern society: “Man is steadily going somewhere without knowing where he is going. Civilisation is gripped by a new disease, called men-no-pause.”40 In 40. Lin Yutang, The Unexpected Island (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955), 48.
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opposing the nonstop progress of modern society dominated by machines, technology, and materialism, Laos leads some people to migrate to an isolated island and establish there a “peach blossom land” in which a new type of civilization can be designed and from which the wholeness of humanity can be preserved. Laos says: We don’t repudiate progress—but are rather trying to stop in this mid-stream of progress and find our bearings, like standing on a rock in mid-river while the swift tide rushes past us. Call it a haven—if you like. A haven, a point to rest and think and live in peace. You will admit that thinking became impossible in the head-long progress of the twentieth century. Men were moving too fast. Vast changes, material discoveries affecting our lives, shortening of communications, obliteration of national frontiers through aviation—these changes happened so fast that men were dragged along.41
This kind of adrenaline-charged modernity, with its enervating influence on modern men, causes the loss of poetry and sunshine and the deterioration of human beings’ original nature: individual authenticity, a naïve spontaneity that is often associated with childhood, and liberty unobstructed by modern authorities. Seeing that man has lost as much as he has gained since the Industrial Revolution, Laos says: As more and more progress was made in the study of matter, less and less attention was given to man. Man’s character had changed; his beliefs had changed; his relation to nature had changed; his individual role in society had changed. Spiritually, man was poorer. He was less himself. It would not be a bad idea to call a temporary moratorium on mechanical progress; what there was was good, but quite enough.42
In The Unexpected Island, Lin Yutang raises extremely important philosophical questions: What exactly has man lost since the Industrial Revolution? What happened to philosophy as it concerns the conduct of life? How can people search for their original selves? How can they rediscover and restore their wholeness and authentic nature? How can they free themselves from the fetters of the outside world? How can humanity regain lost poetry, sunshine, happiness, liberty, and individuality? All these questions not only guide a philosophical examination of human progress but also challenge modern forces by reminding us of the philosophies of Zhuangzi and Zen Buddhism, both of which stress a return to unpolluted and true humanity. The unexpected island—the modern “peach blossom land”—actually represents the ideal life in Lin Yutang’s heart, natural and artistic, a “naturalization of humans,” a return to the wholeness of human beings. Although Lin Yutang describes the island as a “colony” in which a high civilization takes control of a backward aboriginal civilization, we ignore the true value and meaning behind the designation of this utopian island, if we only take the time to interpret this novel from the perspective of postcolonial theories. In contrast to Tao Yuanming, who describes a pastoral life close to the Daoist ideal, Lin Yutang focuses more on a cultural and artistic life with high achievements from both Eastern and Western civilizations. Since The Unexpected Island is based on a combination of Zhuangzi’s philosophy, Daoist culture, and ancient Greek culture, Lin aims to restore cultural, artistic, and leisurely life rather than aboriginal life or a plain rural life. For instance, in this hidden paradise, “Laos headed for the arts; they were very much on his mind. He was trying to cut life down to its essentials, and he could
41. Ibid., 92–93. 42. Ibid., 49.
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not cut good food, or a good bed, or violin music.”43 Lin Yutang tries to present “the art of better living, of living well,” or in other words, the enjoyment of life.44 Such a freer and happier mode of existence attunes with Laozi’s and Zhuangzi’s wuwei (nonaction), as opposed to the purpose and utilitarianism of the modern world. By highlighting the biological nature of human beings, as in both Daoism and Greek culture, Lin Yutang criticizes the fact that everything in the twentieth century must be quasi-scientific. For example, Laos says, “Science wants to measure; it has to. Once you introduce the method of natural science into the humanities, however, you discard one by one that which you cannot measure—God, good and evil, sin and repentance, artistic creations, noble impulses.”45 Lin Yutang fights not the technology but rather the prevailing technological and rational way of thinking, which propels efficiency and growth and accentuates purpose and goal, leaving no space for people to ponder the meaning of life or enjoy it. Many modern Chinese writers are exceedingly fond of Greek culture. Zhou Zuoren enthusiastically translated ancient works and introduced Greek culture to Chinese readers. In his book History of European Literature, he summarizes the Greek spirit as composed of several ideas, most importantly, paying attention to the present, the spirit of worshiping beauty, and the principle of moderation. Regarding ancient Greek literature as a standard by which to measure the literature of later generations, he basically describes the history of European literature as a cyclical process involving the loss and return of the Greek spirit. Zhou admires the Greek emphasis on human nature, beauty, and the virtue of moderation that allows sense and sensibility to maintain a harmonious state. He thinks the Renaissance period marked the return of ancient Greek culture.46 For modern writers, ancient Greek culture is a frame of reference for natural humanity. For instance, Shen Congwen states in his preface to Border Town: “I only want to build a little Greek temple. I would choose a mountain place as its base, using strong stone to build it. Delicate, strong, balanced, although the shape is small, not weak—this is my ideal architecture. Inside the temple it is ‘humanity’ that is being worshiped.”47 Obviously for Shen Congwen, Greek culture represents a beautiful and healthy humanity, a kind of free and ideal state of living that has not been contaminated by modern civilization. In The Unexpected Island, Lin also expresses an ideal Greek spirit, pursuing not the perfect kingdom of divinity but rather the human kingdom that is closer to nature. Therefore, he portrays inhabitants of The Unexpected Island as Greek men and women who love the comfortable life and the universe and are interested in understanding the beauty of life itself. The assertions of surrendering oneself to ease and comfort, enjoying leisure, beauty, nature, poetry, and art, which echo Lin Yutang’s early promotion of leisure discourse in China during the 1930s, are tinged with the Greek cultural ethos. In addition, just as the Greek gods are imperfect, the island inhabitants have many human shortcomings: crimes such as murder, rape, and domestic abuse have not been eliminated. However, it is precisely in this kind of imperfection that one can see the islanders’ true nature. The social and political structure of 43. 44. 45. 46.
Ibid., 51. Ibid., 188. Ibid., 188. Zhou Zuoren, Ouzhou wenxueshi 歐洲文學史 [History of European literature] (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002), 55–57. 47. Shen Congwen, Shen Congwen wenji 沈從文文集 [The Collection of Shen Congwen] (Guangzhou: Huacheng chubanshe, 1992), 11:41.
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the island is also naturalized: there is no powerful and centralized government or strict and complicated laws. According to Laos, “The weaker the government and the more it was held in public contempt, the brighter burned the lamp of liberty, fraternity and equality for all.”48 Basically governed by multiple communities in democratic form, this island allows all kinds of different identities to coexist harmoniously, such as Christian culture, aboriginal culture, Greek culture, and Daoist culture. This political structure offers a glimpse of Zhuangzi’s spirit of open-mindedness and tolerance, which makes it possible to understand multiple values, differences, and otherness. For Lin Yutang, the common ground for Zhuangzi’s philosophy and Greek culture is the naturalization of humans. In the novel, taking the perspective of Zhuangzi, Laos says: I want, first of all, a society where man can recover some of the individuality and independence he has lost. A simpler life. Why not? I want a grand, complete simplification of human life, to find out what man wants in this earthly life, that man may live in harmony with Nature. In the words of the Chinese philosopher, Chuangtse, that man may live out the peaceful tenor of his life, fulfilling his nature. “The universe gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this repose in old age, this rest in death.” To appreciate this universal harmony, the beauty of this cycle, and let our nature be fulfilled in it. And secondly, a society where the excellences of his being can be brought out, where man may develop himself along the lines of his excellences in ease and in freedom.49
Only by returning to the natural human state can one obtain real freedom and find the complete self—this central theme of The Unexpected Island, not only inspired by Zhuangzi’s philosophy but also instigated by the Greek cultural spirit, clearly presents a new and healthy paradigm in which a plurality of values is amplified and a true meaning of individual liberty is protected.50 Indeed, the idealized portrayal of The Unexpected Island, which is construed as a search for an individual’s inner freedom in accordance with nature, makes it an apt allegory for the aesthetic correction of the modern world that has gone astray. In a general sense, Lin Yutang’s The Unexpected Island is virtually the fictional version of his book The Importance of Living, with an additional Greek dimension. As Zhuangzi’s modern spokesman, Lin Yutang could hardly find a haven in which to escape attacks from both leftists and rightists in the Chinese literary field in the 1930s, subjugated by political concepts, ideologies, and -isms. Yet after he migrated to the West, he discovered that human beings are baffled by teleological modernity, and again he could barely escape from modern economic and technological domination. Becoming more and more pessimistic about the overly mechanistic and materialist tendencies in modern culture, he therefore designed an ideal cultural “Peach Blossom Spring” in his imagination and made it a peaceful and utopian home for his own heart and for all humankind’s heart and soul. As he re-emphasizes, the reason he seeks such a utopia is not for the sake of saving the world—a notion that he bluntly defies as a modern 48. Lin Yutang, The Unexpected Island, 203. 49. Ibid., 116. 50. In the protagonist Laos’s language, Lin Yutang reveals, “The whole psychology of his social philosophy may be stated in the cardinal Chuangtsean tenet that man must be free and able to pursue the even tenor of his span of life, and that his nature must be fulfilled. In terms of Greek Philosophy, man should be free to develop along the line of his excellence. That was the true meaning of freedom. All social happiness depends on it.” See Lin Yutang, The Unexpected Island, 135.
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lie—but for the sake of personal salvation, rediscovering the self that has been distorted by modern society.
Conclusion As Jeffrey C. Kinkley argues, literary dystopia in postmodern China has been redirected from the future to the past, represented in particular by the genre of “new historical novels.”51 However, even among those novels that have shown disillusionment with the Communist utopian program during the revolutionary years and the capitalist utopia during the post-Mao era, Zhuangzi’s spirit continues to inspire contemporary Chinese writers’ literary imaginations. Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses depicts an uncontaminated Shouhuo village that is analogous to Peach Blossom Spring, with a little twist: only disabled people are allowed to live in and enjoy this paradise. The images of corporeal deficiency bear a conspicuous resemblance to a number of disabled people portrayed by Zhuangzi, who invests them with philosophical meanings. Zhuangzi believes those disabled people might suffer physical deformity but are capable of maintaining “virtue” in their heart. The Shouhuo villagers are similar to Shu in Zhuangzi, who benefits from his deformity by being exempt from military service and corvée labor. According to Robert Allinson, “Shu’s virtues shine through his actions, or more precisely his lack of actions, not his words.”52 It is exactly through “nonaction” or making himself “useless” to the dominant group that Shu is able to preserve his life and avoid social entanglements. Likewise, benefiting from being marginalized and “useless,” the Shouhuo villagers do not follow the political and social order and therefore have the luxury and right to enjoy their small, peaceful, and reclusive community. The significance of Yan’s decision to connect the deficient with a utopia lies in the concept of “uselessness,” a means to preserve individual nature and withdraw from a fallen world but nonetheless a violation of normal standards of judgment. As David Harvey has said, “The particularity of the body cannot be understood independently of its embeddedness in social-ecological processes.”53 Indeed, the handicapped body is socially and culturally constructed and appears differently before and after joining the commune. When the handicapped are useless people living in the small community, they appear spontaneous, pure, natural, and happy; but, after the Shouhuo villagers’ special skills are discovered and they are turned into extremely “useful” money-making machines, they become deliberate, greedy, alienated, and unhappy, completely losing their true nature and humanity. Ge Fei’s Southern Spring Played Out also conjures Zhuangzi’s spirit as a counterdiscourse to fight against the capitalist utopia, in which everyone has degenerated into a slave of money as well as materialism. The protagonist Duanwu, who was a poet in the 1980s, became a self-marginalized and superfluous man amid the rapidly growing commercial society. As Zhuang Yinde argues, the image of Duanwu reminds us of not only “a superfluous man” inspired by Ivan Turgenev or Ivan Goncharov’s fictional creation but also Gunter Anders’s “obsolete man,” who is simultaneously “a utopian man,” by 51. Kinkley, Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels, 4–5. 52. Robert E. Allinson, Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation: An Analysis of the Inner Chapters (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 61. 53. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 16.
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which the author aims to criticize the material and technological society.54 In addition, this obsolete poet is ostensibly inspired by the uselessness of Zhuangzi’s philosophy, which provides an alternative way to criticize the speedy modernity and economic development that have aggressively enslaved and alienated the true nature of human beings.55 As a lonely and obsolete poet amid the grand tide of money chasing, Duanwu chooses to live a useless, marginal, and leisurely life, which resembles Bai Juyi’s middle reclusive life (zhongyin 中隱), which means neither “a big reclusive life” (dayin 大隱) in the noisy and rambunctious city nor “a small reclusive life” (xiaoyin 小隱) in a quiet and remote forest or mountains, but rather a life between the two extremes, being a “useless” person free from social coercion.56 Such an aesthetic person who withdraws from the frantic pursuit of economic utopia in postmodern China has maintained his or her integrity and genuine heart, returning to the interiority of the individual. In his book The New Theory of Laozi and Zhuangzi (Lao-Zhuang xinlun 老莊新論), the scholar Chen Guying aptly points out, “The way Zhuangzi talks about freedom is completely nonpolitical, rather it is spiritual. Even on the level of politics, Zhuangzi holds the ideas that first, one should operate according humans’ natural nature; second, people should be bestowed freedom and subjectivity; third, the unification of thought is unacceptable, and instead, individual difference should be respected; fourth, one should be emancipated from the constraints of paradigms and -isms.”57 Since the late Qing period, the modern utopian imagination has usually been established for the purpose of reforming the national character and rebuilding new citizens. However, such a modern utopian dream has usually been grounded in utilitarianism, disrespect for individuality, and an ignorance of the original nature of human beings. In postmodern society, in which “the end of utopias” has triggered indifference and nihilism, Zhuangzi’s spirit not only sheds light on modern utopian imaginations, which have been overshadowed by a monist way of thinking, but also offers a source of hope that continues to illuminate our search for meanings.
Bibliography Allinson, Robert E. Chuang-Tzu for Spiritual Transformation: An Analysis of the Inner Chapters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Bai Juyi 白居易. Bai Juyi ji 白居易集 [The collection of Bai Juyi]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979. Berlin, Isaiah. Liberty. Edited by Henry Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Chen Guying 陳鼓應. Lao-Zhuang xinlun 老莊新論 [The new theory of Lao-Zhuang]. Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1991. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi]. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Takes and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Victor H. Mair. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. Cui Dahua 崔大華. Zhuangxue yanjiu 莊學研究 [The Studies of Zhuangzi]. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1992. Daruvala, Susan. Zhou Zuoren and an Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. 54. Zhang Yinde, “The Utopia of the Human: About Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy,” paper presented at the conference “Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces,” University of Hong Kong, March 20–21, 2015. 55. Ibid. 56. Bai Juyi, Bai Juyi ji 白居易集 [The collection of Bai Juyi] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), vol. 2, 490. 57. Chen Guying, Lao-Zhuangzi xinbian 老莊新辯 [The new theory of Lao-Zhuang] (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1991), 265.
Jianmei Liu 145 Fang Dongmei 方東美. Fang Dongmeiji 方東美集 [The collection of Fang Dongmei]. Edited by Huang Kejian and Zhong Xiaolin. Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe, 1993. Gao Xingjian 高行健. Leng de wenxue 冷的文學 [Cold literature].Translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong and Mabel Lee. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. Ha Yingfei 哈迎飛. “Lun Zhou Zuoren de daojia lichang” 論周作人的道家立場 [On Zhou Zuoren’s Daoist position]. Guizhou shehui kexue 7 (2008): 114–18. Harvey, David. Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Hsia, C. T. A History of Modern Chinese Fiction. 3rd ed. Introduction by David Der-wei Wang. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Hu Shi. “Bu xiu” 不朽 [Immortality]. Xin qingnian 6, no. 2 (1919): 113–22. ———. “Buxiu—wode zongjiao” 不朽—我的宗教 [Immortality—My Religion]. In Hu Shi quanji 胡 適全集 [The complete works of Hu Shi], 1:659–68. Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003. Kinkley, Jeffrey C. Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Lin Gang. “Toward an Aesthetics of Freedom.” In Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writing, edited by Michael Lackner and Nikola Chardonnens, 121–37. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Lin Yutang 林語堂. The Unexpected Island. Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955. Liu Jianmei. Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Liu Xiaogan 劉笑敢. Zhuangzi zhexue jiqi yanbian 莊子哲學及其演變 [The philosophy of Zhuangzi and its transformation]. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2010. Qian Mu 錢穆. Zhuanglao tongbian 老莊通辯 The general distinction between Laozi and Zhuangzi]. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2002. Ramoneda, Josep. “At the End of Utopia—Indifference.” In Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought, edited by Patricia Vieira and Michael Marder, 113–26. New York: Continuum, 2012. Schwartz, Benjamin. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985. Shen Congwen 沈從文. Shen Congwen wenji 沈從文文集 [The Collection of Shen Congwen]. Guangzhou: Huacheng chubanshe, 1992. Shu Wu 舒蕪. Zhou Zuoren de shifei gongguo 周作人的是非功過 [The merits and demerits of Zhou Zuoren]. Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2000. Zhang Taiyan 章太炎. Houxu 後序 [Afterword] to Qiwulun shi 齊物論釋 [The theory and interpretation of equating all things]. In Shijia lun Zhuang 十家論莊 [Ten experts talking about Zhuangzi], edited by Hu Daojing 胡道靜, 421–51. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2008. Zhang Yinde, “The Utopia of the Human: About Ge Fei’s Jiangnan Trilogy.” Paper presented at the conference “Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces.” University of Hong Kong, March 20–21, 2015. Zhao Hong 趙泓. Zhongguoren de wutuobang zhimeng: Xincun zhuyi zai Zhongguo de chuanbo yu fazhan 中國人的烏托邦之夢:新村主義在中國的傳播與發展 [The Chinese utopian dream: The propagation and development of New Village-ism in China]. Taibei: Duli zuojia, 2014. Zhou Zuoren周作人. Ouzhouwen xueshi 歐洲文學史 [History of European literature]. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. ———. “Rende wenxue” 人的文學 [Human literature]. In Yishu yu shenghuo 藝術與生活 [Arts and life]. In Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren], 8–17. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. ———. “Riben de xincun” 日本的新村 [The New Village in Japan]. New Youth (April 1919). ———. “Wenyi de tongyi” 文藝的統一 [The unification of arts], in Ziji de yuandi 自己的園地 [My own garden], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren], 24–26. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. ———. “Wenyishang de yiwu” 文藝上的異物 [The different things in the arts]. In Ziji de yuandi 自 己的園地 [My own garden], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren], 27–30. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002.
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———. “Xincun de lixiang yu shiji” 新村的理想與實際 [The ideal and practice of the New Village], in Yishu yu shenghuo 藝術與生活 [Arts and life], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren], 213–20. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002. ———. “Yishushang de kuanrong” 藝術上的寬容 [The tolerance of arts], in Ziji de yuandi 自己的 園地 [My own garden], in Zhou Zuoren zixuanji 周作人自編集 [The self-selected collection of Zhou Zuoren], 8–10. Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002.
9
Traveling through Time and Searching for Utopia Utopian Imaginaries in Internet Time-Travel Fiction
Shuang Xu
The contemporary genre of time-travel fiction emerged hand-in-hand with the development of Chinese-language internet literature. This new form of time-travel fiction has reconfigured traditional themes of time travel, responding to movements in contemporary science fiction, and developing a new space for fantasy writing. Because of its influence and vibrancy, time-travel writing has become one of the dominant genres of Chinese-language internet literature and today enjoys not only a prominent position within the field of internet literature but has made inroads into the broader sphere of popular literature, becoming a significant phenomenon in contemporary Chinese literature itself. A number of critical studies of internet time-travel literature have been published: some offer an overview of the genre, while others focus on more specific topics such as the feminist examination of “female empowerment” and “slash” subgenres or the consideration of the relationship between literature and society by looking at ways in which sex is embedded within a variety of discursive and surveillance systems. This chapter will focus on the genre of time-travel fiction from the perspective of Michel Foucault’s theory of utopian bodies. Foucault’s theory of corporeality is well known. In a 1966 television lecture, Foucault proposed the concept of “utopian bodies.” In his 1975 study Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues that bodies are not merely material objects but also social, cultural, and political entities.1 In his book Utopian Bodies and Heterotopias, Foucault contends that bodies represent that within which we are perpetually imprisoned: “In the end, all of those utopias only begin to form through a process of opposing and eliminating the body.”2 Foucault argues that within the utopian space that is most deeply rooted in people’s hearts, we inevitably find “a fantasy of an incorporeal body” (un corps incorporel)—which is to say that “all non-native spaces” have a “beautiful, clear, transparent, flashing, agile, incomparably strong, endlessly enduring, unrestrained yet invisible body.”3 1. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 2. Michel Foucault, Le corps utopique suivi de les hétérotopies (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2009), 10. 3. Ibid.
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From this perspective, given that the plotlines of time-travel narratives often involve a protagonist who manages (either by fate or design) to leave his or her own body and travel to a different period, this new fanciful travel literature describes precisely the imaginary of the “pitiless site” (topie impitoyable) in which people have discarded their bodies. The protagonist usually travels to a fictional dynasty or foreign land, undergoes many hardships, and in the process manages to rediscover him- or herself and attain an ideal life. As a result, the protagonist’s body exceeds its own limits to reach a more ideal realm. Foucault also indicates that, in structural terms, a person cannot exist outside the body. Therefore, utopia must emerge from the body, as the body’s utopian virtualities use different forms and paths to derealize and transfigure the new world, thereby creating a new relationship with the world. Foucault calls these utopian expressions emerging from the body heterotopian bodies and argues that, in contrast to bodies located in “ordinary social space,” these heterotopian bodies “are always located elsewhere [ailleurs], meaning that they are an other space within the world.”4 These heterotopian bodies satisfy, stimulate, and complete a utopian imaginary, permitting bodies to escape all sorts of essentializing definitions and to realize an “alternate” ideal in the present moment. Closely related to the concept of a heterotopian body is the notion of a heterotopian imaginary. Borrowing Bachelard’s theory of a poetic space, Foucault grants it a utopian imaginary dimension, which is to say he asks whether those spaces that are completely different from the spaces we inhabit—which could be called “verifiable localized utopias,” or “heterotopias”—may be used to reveal their heterogeneity. Heterotopias exist as a sort of “counterspace,” which comes in a variety of forms, and not only are they fractured off from the ordinary space to which they are opposed, but furthermore they are continually interpenetrated by the latter, yielding a continual process of separation. Meanwhile, the self is always simultaneously “present” and “not present,” revealing a kind of doubleness or multiplicity. In this sort of space, power and order are continually brought into question and dispersed. The plot, characters, and textual form of time-travel fiction bear a definite resemblance to Foucault’s concept of a utopian or heterotopian body. How may this image be developed? What are its special characteristics? This chapter will pursue these questions through an examination of the time-travel novel Empress Fuyao (扶搖皇后), written by the internet author known as Tianxia Guiyuan 天下歸元.5
Imagining a Utopian Body The online author Tianxia Guiyuan writes primarily for a female readership and specializes in women’s romances written with a powerful yet delicate style. In 2008, she signed a contract with Xiaoxiang Press (Xiaoxiang Shuyuan, 瀟湘書院, http://www. xxsy.net/) to publish her works online, including Empress Fuyao, Phoenix Power (凰權),
4. Ibid., 17. 5. Tianxia Guiyuan 天下歸元, Fuyao huanghou (shang, xia) 扶搖皇后(上,下)[Empress Fuyao], vols. 1–2, Fuyao huanghou (Zhongjie pian) (shang, xia) 扶搖皇后(終結篇,上,下)[Empress Fuyao (final ed.)], vols. 1–2 (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2011).
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Imperial Phoenix (帝凰), Thousand Tael Smile (千金笑), and Sparrows Scattered Everywhere (燕傾天下). The protagonist of Empress Fuyao, Meng Fuyao, is a twenty-two-year-old tomb raider. She majored in archeology in college and, to cover the high cost of her mother’s medical care, from the age of seventeen also pursues a dangerous underground career as a tomb raider. After an accident inside an old tomb, Meng Fuyao’s soul travels to a continent called Wuzhou, where she is reborn in the court of the kingdom of Xuanji. In this life, when she is five years old, her mother is executed, whereupon the child is adopted by an old Taoist monk and, under the monk’s instruction, learns a variety of difficult martial arts. When she is still in the middle of her training, however, the monk kicks her out and forces her to enter the secular world. The story begins from the point at which, at the age of seventeen, Fuyao competes in a sword-fighting competition, and the narrative describes the challenges that she experiences over the next three years. She undergoes all sorts of challenges, births and deaths, until finally she succeeds in uniting the seven kingdoms of Wuzhou and becomes an empress. Later, however, she gives up this position and instead goes straight to Changqing Temple, where she manages to break through to another level and, with the help of her lover and friends, she travels back to the present day to bury her mother. Afterward, she returns once again to Wuzhou, where she has children and, together with her lover, comes to rule over the entire world. On virtually every line of every page of this convoluted narrative, we can find a Foucauldian figure of the utopian “incorporeal body.” First, there is Fuyao’s own time-traveling body. Her story may be viewed as a case of her soul leaving her body in the present and entering a different space-time matrix. Her soul leaves the depressing and oppressive present and enters another body with magical powers—and through this foreign life and experience Fuyao is able to use a different body’s eyes to discover a new world. In three short years she manages to achieve unimaginable success, becoming the ruler of Wuzhou. This may be seen as an example of what Foucault calls the most powerful utopian body—which is to say, the myth of the soul. Fuyao’s soul is granted magical powers whereby it can “accurately find a juncture in a different time,” thereby permitting her to return to whatever point in the past she wishes, while also traversing the boundary of death and life between body and soul and back again. The novel describes the soul’s imaginary travel in this way: There was a jade-colored radiance under a golden orb, which then become a jadecolored roll of silk. It floated around the vast palace, slowly moving toward Meng Fuyao. . . . She suddenly felt chills all over her body, and she felt a sense of lightness. It was as if someone were gently knocking on her head, and gently whispering in her ear, “Go.” Then, everything went black. . . . The gold orb slowly moved, then gradually began to spin as it expanded to cover the entire hall. In the light, there was a faint jadecolored dot, drifting away. . . . The radiance gradually faded, as that jade-colored dot . . . descended into the place where he had arranged for her to go.6
The soul is like a “jade-colored tiny dot, drifting away.” It is beautiful, pure, sparkling, and nimble, moving freely back and forth. The imagination of this sort of utopian body appears in the novel’s epilogue and is described as the most ideal realm. The multiple utopian bodies that appear in the novel are frequently observed in a process of traversing conventional corporeal limits. For instance, Fuyao is weightless 6. Tianxia Guiyuan, Fuyao huanghou (zhongjie pian) (xia), 2:779–80.
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and impervious to the effects of gravity and is able to float like smoke and soar over the snow-capped mountains. Similarly, the master of the Changqing Temple can walk so quietly that no one even notices she is there. There is also Fuyao’s lover, Zhangsun Wuji, who resembles a fairy, and the senior temple master, who “appears to be of an advanced age, but his skin is bright and moist, and you can’t discern his true age.” From time immemorial, this sort of utopian body has been a source of humanity’s imagination. In Empress Fuyao these are countless sections that use traditional elements borrowed from other literary works (both ancient and modern, including sci-fi, fantasy, and wuxia fiction) to reveal the body’s hidden utopian powers, such as the ability to use wugong, magic, and training of the will to “ensure that the body has secret powers and hidden strength.”7 In this way, ordinary bodies may enter a different sphere of existence and become heterotopian ones. For instance, as Zhangsun Wuji masters wugong techniques, his body becomes extraordinarily refined, while the body of Fuyao attains a beauty that “transcends time and space.” In Tianxia Guiyuan’s novel, utopian bodies—or heterotopian bodies with secret utopian powers—continually desire to occupy an alternate space. Although Fuyao’s body crosses over to a different world, her soul remains as it had been in the original temporality. But as she is passing through Wuzhou, her body is always either wearing a mask or disguised as an ugly lady8 or as a man. Sometimes when she is kissed by her lover, the kiss “floats under the cicada wing mask.” Similarly, when other characters appear, including Zhangsun Wuji, Zong Yue, and Mingzhu Shenshi, they are frequently wearing masks made either of skin, bronze, or gold. When bodies are located in other spaces, they may satisfy a utopian imagination while simultaneously suggesting the possibility of escaping one’s identity. These bodies, accordingly, are perpetually located at the interstices of being and not being.
Heterotopia: Doubts about a Counterspace The dual or even multiple dimensions of heterotopian bodies are the distinguishing feature of contemporary time-travel fiction, revealing a focus on identity that is often absent in traditional fiction on the same topic. The theme of time travel already appears in traditional Chinese literary works such as the story “A Day in the Celestial Sphere, a Century in the Mortal World” (仙界一 日,人間百年), collected in Li Daoyuan’s 酈道元 collection Shuijing zhu (水經註, from the Northern Wei period), or Liu Yiqing’s 劉義慶 Youming lu (幽明錄, from the Southern Dynasties period), which records how Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao go into the mountains to pick herbs, but when they return home six months later they discover that several centuries have elapsed. Narratives about randomly entering a different temporality also inevitably remind us of Tao Yuanming’s 陶淵明 famous fable from the Eastern Jin period, Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源記). In time-travel literature published over the internet, people from the modern period often lose consciousness and cross over to a different period and after a series of adventures, the story concludes with them regaining consciousness in the present. This kind of narrative structure reminds us of 7. Foucault, Le corps utopique suivi de Les hétérotopies, 15: “faire entrer le corps en communication avec des pouvoirs secrets et des forces invisibles.” 8. Tianxia Guiyuan, Fuyao huanghou (shang), 1:17.
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the tradition of dream-fantasy stories in premodern literature, including “Jiao Lake Temple” (焦湖廟) in the Six Dynasties zhiguai collection Soushen ji (搜神記), “Huangliang Dream” (黃梁夢) in the Tang dynasty chuanqi collection Shenzhong ji (枕中記), “Dream of a Southern Tributary State” (南柯一夢) in Li Gongzuo’s 李公佐 collection Nanke taishou chuan (南柯太守傳). The bizarre plotlines in time-travel fiction, such as that of Tianxia Guiyuan’s novel Empress Phoenix,9 in which the protagonist’s soul leaves her original body and enters someone else’s, echoes the plot of the Tang dynasty chuanqi work Record of Leaving the Soul (離魂記). At the level of content, internet time-travel literature places particular emphasis on emotion. Unlike traditional Chinese genres of zhiguai, chuanqi, and zhiyi, contemporary time-travel fiction often uses first-person narration or internal perspective and focuses on a subjective “I.” It describes a character’s perception and from this reveals the shifting consciousness and unstable identity of a (corporeal) “self.” In time-travel narratives that involve entering someone else’s body or wearing a mask, a utopian body covertly places the subject in a different location—either a prospective new world or a world that establishes new contacts and creates new identities—even as the original subject periodically interrupts the narration and questions this “other body.” Multiple bodies threaten the soul’s singularity, breaking down the self’s unified identity. In reality, heterotopian bodies reflect an anxiety about identity. The self has died and traveled through time. The self is now another. The self, accordingly, is not the self. The face that is hidden or disappears beneath a mask uses its eyes to narrate how one should experience this sort of spiritual or psychological breakdown, attempting to recover a lost identity. As a result, when Fuyao travels to a different temporality, she remains determined to return to her mother’s side in the present, but when she finally succeeds in returning to the present she wonders whether to return again to Wuzhou. She therefore sighs in frustration, asking, “Am I not someone who is caught between past and present?”10 In addition, after the protagonist travels through time, she frequently possesses a strong body and a bold and daring identity, with a modern person’s knowledge and an independent personality. She is surrounded by admirers, while her social abilities often exceed those of the men around her. She frequently dresses as a man and interacts primarily with other men. This is a female body that challenges traditional values. In the warrior’s eyes, for instance, Fuyao “cannot be evaluated based on ordinary female standards and experience.”11 However, in the novel this sort of “other body” constitutes a female corporeal ideal. Not only is Fuyao successful in her new career; she even manages to find love. In the “female empowerment” subgenre of time-travel fiction, a soul may enter a society in which women are empowered and men are denigrated, in which women marry men (and potentially even multiple men), and where women work outside the home while men wait on them and bear children. One representative work of this subgenre is Gongteng Shenxiu’s 宮藤深秀 2006 novel Flowers of Four Seasons— Returning Soul to the Country of Women (Sishi huakai zhi huanhun nü’erguo 四時花開之 9. Tianxia Guiyuan 天下歸元, Di Huang (shang, zhong, xia) 帝凰(上,中,下)[Empress Phoenix], vols. 1–3 (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2011). 10. Tianxia Guiyuan, Fuyao huanghou (zhongjie pian) (xia), 2:784. 11. Tianxia Guiyuan, Fuyao huanghou (zhongjie pian) (xia) 2:464.
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還魂女兒國), which was originally serialized on the Jinjiang Literature City website.12 Another subgenre is that of the slash fiction, in which women from the contemporary era can travel into men’s bodies and then may develop a romance with another man. One example is Liu Yue’s 流玥 The Phoenix That Rules the World (Feng ba tianxia 鳳霸 天下).13 Literary scholars have found that through this sort of corporeal imagination women may cross gender lines, traversing traditional conventions of love between men and women, but the result is distinct from both homoerotic fiction14 and from a work like the mid-nineteenth-century novel Precious Mirror for Evaluating Flowers (品花寶鑒), which uses male desire to reimagine women.15 Heterotopian bodies expand heterotopian spaces. The nation represented in historical time-travel fiction lacks geographic and historical landmarks, and instead we find a fictitious land created out of the narrative itself, which is a counterspace imagined out of the contemporary period. In Empress Fuyao, this counterspace is first of all the region of the seven nations of Wuzhou, within which Fuyao is repeatedly challenged and “tempered” (chuang 闖): she is born in the kingdom of Xuanji, receives her martial arts training in the kingdom of Taiyuan, fights a military insurgency in the kingdom of Wuji, is appointed Queen Han in the kingdom of Tiansha, is appointed Teacher of the kingdom in Xuanyuan, in Xuanji her title of queen is changed to that of Dayuan, in the kingdom of Fufeng she battles Saint Feiyan, and in the kingdom of Qiongcang she enters the Changqing Temple, from which she manages to return to the present day. The vast territory of seven nations continues to expand following Fuyao’s self-realization, while the story’s narration enriches the seven nations’ historical records that appear in the novel. As Foucault observes at the beginning of his essay on heterotopias, city-states and territories that cannot be found on actual maps and histories may, through the process of narration, coalesce into a state of utopian perfection within the empty spaces of dreams, which is what we observe here. Novels about counterspaces often feature sparsely inhabited border regions such as caves, and in Tianxia Guiyuan’s novel Fuyao initially travels back in time after falling into a cave, and after she is injured in Wuzhou she is also left in a mountain cave, where she manages to find a way to survive. Other liminal regions such as mountain peaks, cliffs, valleys, and forests often appear in the novel, where they are used to expand this imagination of an “other space.” A cemetery is another very important counterspace for imagining utopian bodies. Because time pauses there, the space of the cemetery becomes separated from daily time. In Tianxia Guiyuan’s novel, the temple master of the Changqing Temple uses an Earth Palace to receive souls, and when Fuyao’s own
12. In print form, see Gongteng Shenxiu 宮藤深秀, Sishi huakai zhi huanhun nü’erguo, vols. 1–3 (Nanchang: 21 shiji chubanshe, 2007). For a gender-studies comparison of Sishi huakai zhi huanhun nü’erguo and Li Ruzhen’s 李汝珍 novel Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghuayuan 鏡花緣), see Jin Feng, Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 95–98. 13. See Liu Yue 流玥, Feng ba tianxia 鳳霸天下, vols. 1–3 (Beijing: Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2007). 14. See Jin Feng, “The Danmei Hero as a Combination of Ideal Masculinity and Ideal Femininity,” in Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance, 78. 15. For commentaries on Pinhua baojian, see David Der-wei Wang, “Kuashiji de jinse zhilian—cong Pinhua baojian dao Shijimo shaonian ai duben” 跨世紀的禁色之戀——從《品花寶鑒》到《世紀末少年愛讀本》, in David D. W. Wang 王德威, Ruhe xiandai, zenyang wenxue?—Shijiu, ershi shiji zhongwen xiaoshuo xinlun 如何 現代,怎樣文學?——十九、二十世紀中文小說新論 [The making of the modern, the making of a literature: New perspectives on 19th- and 20th-century Chinese fiction], 2nd ed., (Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 2012), 101–9.
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soul returns to the present her lover Zhangsun Wuji waits in a gold coffin for the return of her soul and her perfect utopian body.16 For Foucault, a boat is a paradigmatic example of a heterotopia.17 A boat occupies a flowing space, characterized by its self-sufficiency; and it is relatively self-enclosed, yet advances freely. In the novel, the night that Fuyao has her “blood moon” experience in Fufeng, she is harmed by black magic and loses consciousness, after which she is left afloat at sea. There is a boat that carries her out into the ocean, permitting her to visit a small island known as Luosha, which may be seen as a dystopian Peach Blossom Spring. Here, deep beneath the ocean she discovers a tool for time travel—a page from a golden book. This permits her to arrive at the final stop on her journey: the Changqing Temple in Qiongcang. One could say, therefore, that for her the boat represents a space of utopian hope, while also being a space where reality itself is brought into question. The significance of a heterotopia lies in its ability to grant the possibility of creating an “other space.” The novel does not deny that this “other space” is merely a fantasy. The cover of the first volume of Empress Fuyao uses the phrase “geese flying by without leaving a trace” to indicate the fantasy of time travel, while the book’s final chapter concludes with an allusion to “emptiness”: “beauty and prosperity are all left in the emptiness of smoke and fog, and all excitement is untouchable, located high in the clouds” (錦繡繁華,都是落在煙雲之中的空花,怎樣的熱鬧,都似隔著雲端般抓撓不著). In this way, a heterotopian “other space” offers young women in reality a potential for achieving a state of “desubjectification,” together with a space for venting their “utopian rage.” In giving her protagonist the name Fuyao, the author is granting her a lofty sentiment—reminiscent of Zhuangzi’s phrase “ascending in a whirlwind, to a height of 90,000 li, her body above the clouds.”18 Indeed, after traveling through time, Fuyao proceeds to wander through the seven nations of Wuzhou, and her body is constituted through a process of being tempered (chuang) by these various challenges,19 while her “wandering” is a process whereby a “lack of regulation coalesces into a new routine.”20 Meanwhile, the cover of the second volume of the novel uses the phrase “empty-handed in a chaotic world” to describe Fuyao. It is precisely as a result of the protagonist’s act of constantly challenging order and custom that she is able to realize an idealized utopian body and moreover is able to construct a new political and social order. One could even say that it is through the process of imagining the creation of a counterspace that it is possible to develop new connections between humanity and the world. In this way one is able to doubt reality and express a new political or social imagination.
16. Foucault, Le corps utopique suivi de les hétérotopies, 23. 17. Ibid., 35. 18. The name Fuyao comes from the line at the beginning of the Zhuangzi, “[The peng] ascends in a whirlwind (fuayo) 90,000 li.” 19. See David Der-wei Wang, “Wei bei shenzhang de zhengyi—Sanxia wuyi yu Laocan youji xinlun,” 未被伸張 的正義——《三俠五義》與《老殘遊記》新論, in Wang, Ruhe xiandai, zenyang wenxue?, 81. 20. Chen Pingyuan, “Qiangu wenren xiake meng—wuxia xiaoshuo leixing yanjiu: Di 8 zhang, Langji tianya” 千古文人俠客夢──武俠小說類型研究:第八章,浪跡天涯,” in Cheng Pingyuan xiaoshuo shilun ji (zhong) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1997), 1117.
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Internet Literature: A Utopia of a New Era? The development of internet literature has also created a heterotopic space within the literary realm. First of all, this is a space that is simultaneously embedded within and separated from daily life. Tianxia Guiyuan’s literary identity is rooted in a “Jinlü qu” (金縷曲) verse form that frequently appears in classical poetry: “Brushing aside the red dust of three thousand dreams, and betrothals like endless streams of falling stars. . . . In these women’s chambers, I carelessly compose new verse (拂我紅塵三千夢,不 謝流光如許……且譜紅顏香墨裏,弄銀箏弦亂得新句).21 Tianxia Guiyuan uses this line to express her attempt through text to create a space to which she can entrust her “three thousand dreams from the mortal world.” Meanwhile, the author’s real identity was not revealed until after Empress Fuyao had been awarded a major literary prize, whereupon she began appearing in popular literary settings. I eventually discovered, on the Chinese Police Culture website (Zhongguo jingying wenhua wang), that Tianxia Guiyuan is actually a policewoman22 and that in 2013 she had been held up as a model for a progress toward a “dream of self-strengthening.”23 The author reveals in an interview that she does all of her writing in her spare time—at night and during breaks during the day. Before attending to the word count, she devotes all of her attention to issues of plot and character development and can therefore easily write between 1,500 and 2,500 words in one sitting. One might even say that internet writing becomes an “other space” where alternative actions and emotions may be expressed. From the perspective of the relationship between text and society, this space of internet literature is simultaneously private and public. Taking the version of Empress Fuyao published on the Xiaoxiang Press website as an example,24 the novel’s table of contents includes not only traditional chapters and prologue (xiezi 楔子) but also fanwai 番外, commentary (zuopin taolunqu 作品討論區), and related texts (zuopin xiangguan 作 品相關) sections. Fanwai is a textual form that appeared following the development of the internet. Similar to an “unofficial history” (外傳), the fanwai contains supplementary material that the author has added to the original text, which might further develop the work’s plot or humorously provide additional stories about the work’s characters. Jin Feng contends that, given readers’ expectation of a steady stream of new texts, when internet authors are writing the original version of a novel they will often place primary emphasis on plot development, while the existence of the fanwai section not only encourages readers to become absorbed by the characters’ inner emotions; it also gives them an opportunity to develop detailed narratives based on some of the novel’s original plotlines. However, the fanwai section can also stimulate readers to indulge their desire to write, and some 21. Tianxia Guiyuan, “Ziwo jieshao: Jinlü qu” 自我介紹:金縷曲, in Huangquan 凰權 [Phoenix power], vols. 1–2, Huangquan (wanmei zhongjie) 凰權 (完美終結) [Phoenix power (perfect final ed.)], vols. 1–2 (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2012), front cover. 22. Tianxia Guiyuan’s real name is Lu Jing 盧菁, and she works as a policewoman for the Jurong municipality police under the administration of the city of Zhenjiang. See “Zhi women shanyao jingying de xuancai qingchun” 致我們閃耀警營的炫彩青春, Zhongguo jingying wenhua wang 中國警營文化網, last modified May 12, 2013, http://www.cpcnets.com/bencandy.php?fid=32&aid=10954&page=4. 23. “Jurongshi gong’anju fuweihui ‘sixiang jucuo’ yinling nüjing jianshe ‘ping’an Jurong’” 句容市公 安局婦委會“四項舉措”引領女警建設“平安句容,” last modified May 12, 2013, http://www.zjwomen. org/2013/0503/5868.html. 24. “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu”《扶搖皇后》閱讀目錄, last modified July 3, 2010, http://www.xxsy.net/ books/244402/default.html.
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readers may even transform the fanwai into a work of fan fiction, in this way becoming authors in their own right.25 The fanwai section of the online edition of Empress Fuyao is entitled “Marriage Chronicle” and is divided into three parts.26 This section pokes fun at the discussion between Fuyao and her lover, Zhangsun Wuji, in which the latter proposes marriage but Fuyao repeatedly declines. Unlike the original text, the language found in this fanwai section is exceedingly vulgar and imitates the style of popular authors such as Qiong Yao 瓊瑤 and Gu Long 古龍, as well as the director Stephen Chow 周星馳. The printed version of the work also has two fanwai sections, though the language of these sections is considerably more literary than is that of the sections appended to the internet version. The first of these latter two fanwai sections transposes the novel’s characters into a television program that was very popular in real life in 2010, using a contemporary perspective to reassess the emotional relationships in the original narrative, while the second rewrites the conclusion of the novel from the perspective of one of the work’s secondary characters. The language of this latter section is delicate and exquisite and is not in any way inferior to that of the original work. If we were to say that in the original novel the author is hidden within the perspective of the fictional characters, then in the fanwai sections the author’s carnivalesque language is very evident, indicating a close interaction with readers. The commentary section, meanwhile, contains lengthy readers’ commentaries on the work. Empress Fuyao contains 139 commentaries, including assessments of individual characters, opinions on the plot, and postreading reflections. This is a platform where readers can interact with the author. Sometimes, the readers’ opinions can even influence the subsequent development of the work’s plot, since each new chapter is released almost simultaneously with the readers’ commentaries. The related texts section, meanwhile, contains the author’s own reflections and publication announcements. This is also a platform for the author and readers to interact with one another. Just as the author can interact with readers in the original text, he or she can do so in the comments. Here, the author can interact with readers as though they were close friends and can even discuss his or her most private frustrations in real life. In 2012, when Tianxia Guiyuan attended the inaugural conference on internet literature, she emphasized the importance of mutual cooperation between author and readers. In 2013, at the Qidian Conference on Chinese-Language Internet Literature, the internet author Yuren Erdai 魚人二代 also indicated that “the difference between internet literature and traditional fiction lies in the interaction between authors and readers.”27 On the Xiaoxiang Press website, Tianxia Guiyuan’s readers have voluntarily assumed some of the publicity responsibilities for the novel, and on the author’s behalf they have created a discussion board, a Baidu forum, a QQ group, a Wechat group, a Weibo fan group, and an “official voice” group (all chat groups online). They organize activities on all sorts of anniversaries, while also posting announcements on other large 25. Feng, Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance, 67–68. 26. “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu.” 27. Yuren Erdai, “Wangluo xiaoshuo gen chuantong xiaoshuo de qubie shi duxie hudong.” 網絡小說跟傳統 小說的區別是讀寫互動, Zhongguo zuojia wang 中國作家網, last modified December 10, 2013. http://www. chinawriter.com.cn/2013/2013-12-10/184558.html.
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discussion forums. Whenever a new book is published, they organize group purchases, during book signings they arrange group visits, and they disseminate as quickly as possible the titles of the author’s new books to the mailing lists of large websites. One could therefore say that, within the space of internet literature, groups of fans with similar interests frequently aggregate around a certain author or literary work. This is an emotional collective that is based on a novel’s power. Between an author and her or his readers, a spiritual support system may also develop. When facing traditional literary critics, Tianxia Guiyuan explains the situation in this way: For the women readers for whom this work is written, this kind of emotional relationship already exists. . . . As long as this inspirational novel can give its targeted demographic a positive and radiant spiritual belief, it will have achieved its objective.28
From this perspective, in this new era of the internet the space of internet literature can indeed provide the possibility of a new utopian imagination. Meanwhile, the heterotopias created by this same internet literature may help promote new literary perspectives and the formation of new social relationships. Similarly, internet literature can also take the form of actual books, and although on the surface the latter are no different from traditional printed novels, the commentary appearing on the books’ back cover points to the existence of another literary space. The back cover of the first volume of Empress Fuyao, for instance, includes commentaries by five online readers, which cover the work’s language, plot, and characters—all of which were taken from the novel’s online commentaries page. Meanwhile, the back cover of the first volume of Empress Fuyao (final edition) includes commentaries by four famous internet authors of best-selling works, including the leading author of women-centered time-travel fiction, Qian Lü 淺綠—the author of “The Fate of Mismarriage Series” (錯 嫁良緣系列), a notable representative of new time-travel fiction who is also an A-list author on the Xiaoxiang Press site. The quotations that appear in the print versions of Tianxia Guiyuan’s other novels have similar characteristics.29 In sum, this represents a new literary space grounded in what critic Zhang Ning calls a “mechanism of readerbased selection,” which reveals the collection formation of an enormous “production— dissemination—reception” system,30 and in which authors and readers may dream each other into existence. First of all, this is an author’s dream. Internet author Qian Lü—who in 2011 published four novels in succession and ranks among the top leisure authors—once indicated that because internet literature’s bar for entry is so low, it therefore offers an ideal opportunity to everyone who may have a “literary dream,” and she adds that this is how she herself began writing.31 28. Tianxia Guiyuan, “Wangluo xieshou mianlin bi chuantong zuojia duo henduode kunrao.”網絡寫手面對 比傳統作家多很多的困擾, in Zhongguo zuojia wang 中國作家網, last modified June 20, 2012. http://www. chinawriter.com.cn. 29. See Tianxia Guiyuan, Huangquan, vol. 1, back cover; Huangquan (wanmei zhongjie), vol. 1, back cover; Di Huang, vol. 1, back cover. 30. Zhang Ning, “Wangluo xiaoshuo de wenxuexing he xin biaozhun—cong yi bu wangluo xiaoshuo tanqi.” 網絡小說的文學性和新標準——從一部網絡小說談起,” Zhongguo zuojia wang中國作家網, last modified December 11, 2013, http://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2013/2013-12-11/184855.html. 31. “Danghong xinxiu zuojia shi ge Liuzhoumei” 當紅新秀作家是個柳州妹, in Dangdai shenghuo bao 當代生 活報, Guangxi xinwen wang 廣西新聞網, last modified August 11, 2011, http://epaper.gxnews.com.cn/ ddshb/html/2011-08/11/content_1864852.htm.
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At the same time, readers are also cocreators of this dream. At the end of the twentyfifth chapter of the online version of Empress Fuyao, Tianxia Guiyuan writes, “Books and people are on the same path, and when I open a book and write the story I want you to read, is there anyone who will step forward and help join me in extending this story of fantasy characters who seem as though they could belong to the mortal world?”32 In the online comments, she shared with her readers her plans for the next step of the story, describing how following chapter would emphasize readers’ feedback in “developing both the text and plot.” Loyal readers attentively follow the author’s writing of the novel, while also offering encouragement and critique. Just as the three sets of commentaries to Empress Fuyao by the reader who writes under the name Yuewei 閱微 were published consecutively in July, August, and September of 2010, reader Junxiao’s 君小 four sets of commentaries were also published between July and November of 2010 and attended closely to the novel’s development.33 Yuewei’s postings in the commentary section of the website specifically thank the author for her persistence in “creating this dream.”34 Moreover, most readers post their commentaries either before going to work (around 8:00 in the morning), around noon, or after dinner, thereby coinciding closely with Tianxia Guiyuan’s own writing schedule—from which we can observe that the dream space of internet literature is something that authors and readers mutually create, mutually enjoy, and use to displace themselves to a space outside of their daily life. From the perspective of the space of literary development, internet literature reveals a kind of counterspace that at the same time is closely imbricated with traditional literature. As a result of the unique compositional process of internet literature—combined with its online identity—its language is able to free itself from all sorts of social strictures and traditional limits, thereby revealing a quality Mikhail Bakhtin calls carnivalesque. Using a variety of neologisms together with humorous, satirical, and informal language to express emotion and personality—the language of internet literature deviates from the conventions of traditional literary language and presents a challenge to traditional aesthetics.35 However, it should be noted that, in this sort of counterspace positioned in opposition to regulated language, one can also see the influence of a traditional aesthetics. For instance, Empress Fuyao uses a technique combining action and stillness, such that after a violent sword fight there will be a love scene characterized by a sort of quiet beauty. The novel also uses the technique of basing fiction on reality in order to describe a feeling of solitude or of using softness to represent hardness—such as using a metaphor of a “ice crystal flower” to describe the shattered fragments of a blade “that soar around under the penetrating sunlight over the ocean,”36 or using “fallen camellia 32. Tianxia Guiyuan, “Juan er: Wuji zhi xin; Di shiwu zhang, du chuang chongwei + ru V gonggao.” 卷二:無 極之心,第十五章,獨闖重圍+入V公告, in Fuyao huanghou [Empress Fuyao], Xiaoxiang wang 瀟湘網, last modified June 30, 2010, http://www.xxsy.net/books/244402/3002585.html. 33. “Changping qu” 長評區, in “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu.” 《扶搖皇后》閱讀目錄 (last modified July 3, 2010. http://www.xxsy.net/books/244402/default.html). 34. “Changpingqu—Yuewei changing” 長評區—閱微長評, in “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu.” 35. See Ouyang Youquan, ed., “Xin minjian wenxue ‘jingshen’” 新民間文學’精神, in Wangluo wenxue gailun 網 絡文學概論 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2008), 103–13; and Li Yuping, “Zai wangluo xuni kongjian de jiaoliu zhong xingcheng de wangluo yuyan biaoda” 在網絡虛擬空間的交流中形成的網絡語言表達, in Wangluo chuanyue xiaoshuo gailun 網絡穿越小說概論 (Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 2011), 134–64. 36. Tianxia Guiyuan, Fuyao huanghou (Zhongjie pian) (xia), 2:511.
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petals” to describe “countless snow-white sword blades.”37 The author often uses an ink-drawing aesthetic to describe individual characters: “The ink- and blood-like life of that proud man has been permanently etched onto the surface of that vast land, and can never be erased.”38 In a description of a fight scene, when an injured man is thrown into the sky, he is described as “flying freely through the snow-filled sky, and landing on the snow-covered ground like a peach blossom drawn in ink.”39 The author’s work also frequently features a technique of synesthesia, such as using touch to describe an aural phenomenon: a majestic sound is described as being like “a slab of ice cutting through the air, and being scattered over great distances,” or the sound of two lovers is described as resembling “a sea wind at night, blowing over softly and nostalgically, tightly enveloping her and not letting her go.”40 In describing individual characters, the author may follow the writing style of the early text An Account of the Tales of the World (世說新語), using natural phenomena as the basis for a metaphorical description, such as describing Zhangsun Wuji as a slab of marble. From the perspective of genre, internet literature reflects formal qualities of fan creation and also features actual fan fiction.41 That is to say, readers with shared interests will gather around a single topic and proceed to write on their own, without any commercial considerations. This may generate a heterotopian space—becoming a form by which internet literature can encourage the creation of spaces based on mutual interest. In his book on the subject, Michel Hockx observes that internet literature reminds readers of “literature in its primary state,” as it emerged at the beginning of the Republican period, in that it is of uneven quality but nevertheless very dynamic and does not necessarily need to become a new space of high literature, in the traditional sense of the word.42 Tianxia Guiyuan proposes that, “no matter whether [internet literature] is regarded as literature or merely popular literature, and no matter what kind of position it occupies, the purpose behind the writing does not change.”43 The size, convenience, and speed of the internet, together with the wide variety of creative sites that it enables, as well as the faith in literature among many denizens of the internet, have helped make internet literature become a new “hyper-real” literary space in twentyfirst-century China.
Conclusion Some scholars believe that traditional time-travel narratives either express a longing for an ideal, otherworldly society; or they return to a historical setting in order to use the past to satirize the present and thereby advocate for reform; or they explore the mysteries of the future and the universe and use it to establish a contrast with the present. The critic Pan Hao, however, notes that “although authors use concepts such as those of time travel and wormholes, the use of this sort of knowledge appears comparatively 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.
Ibid., 2:665. Ibid., 2:767. Ibid., 2:731. Ibid., 2:506. For more on Internet fan fiction, see Feng, Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance, 123–36. 42. Michel Hockx, Internet Literature in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 29. 43. Tianxia Guiyuan, “Wangluo xieshou mianlin bi chuantong zuojia duo henduode kunrao.”
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casual and unfocused. Not only does this literature not address questions of time in any depth (either from a humanistic or a scientific perspective), even the means by which its characters travel through time is often so absurd that it challenges basic logic.”44 This kind of conclusion is the result of mechanically using traditional standards to assess twenty-first-century literary creation. In his assessment of Chinese sci-fi literature, David Wang observes that, after 1949, science fiction, under the broadest understanding of the category, has been gradually suppressed by “science,” while science itself has become suppressed by an ideologically inflected political discourse. As a result, science fiction has no choice but to play a minor role in the shadow of both science research and popular science. Science fiction has therefore become severely restricted, to the point that it has even become a form of propagandistic literature.45 When internet time-travel literature is confronted with orthodox critical standards, it is subject to a similar misunderstanding. Authors of time-travel literature resemble sci-fi authors, in that they are not encouraged, as David Wang puts it, “to use their unbelievable imagination to explore the future of different sorts of utopias and dystopias.”46 In 2011, based on a report in Daily Living (當代生活報), for instance, Qian Lü—after the government prohibited the filming of programs on topics relating to time travel and consequently dissolved all existing contracts—found that there was no way for her novels to be adapted to the screen.47 The imagination of utopian bodies in internet timetravel literature actually expresses a set of doubts about hopes for reality and daily life, as well as an anxiety about identity. Meanwhile, the appearance of heterotopias and heterotopian bodies offers the possibility of escaping from “the present” and going to an “other space,” where one can create new connections and discover a new world. The print version of Empress Fuyao was published under the Enjoy Reading Era (悅讀紀) publication plan, which is a product of a media group specifically concerned with publishing time-travel literature. The name of the Enjoy Reading Era media group reflects its anticipation of a “new year of an enjoyment of reading.” By 2012, the media group had already become the leading publisher of women’s literature in China. The group’s motto is “reading can change women, and women can change the future.”48 As a result of internet literature’s infectiousness, readers tend to come together and form spiritual communities, thereby welcoming the arrival of an era defined even more broadly by an enjoyment of reading. A reader on the United States–based Chinese-language website Yaya Bay once left a comment observing that both the United States and China have time-travel programs, but “in the US they invariably travel forward, while in China they travel backward 44. Pan Hao, “Wenxue zuopin zhong de chuanyue shikong muti, jianyi dangdai wangluo chuanyue xiaoshuo” 文學作品中的穿越時空母題,兼議當代網絡穿越小說, in Qingnian wenxue 青年文學, no. 14 (2010). 45. David Der-wei Wang, “Wutuobang, etuobang, yituobang: Cong Lu Xun dao Liu Cixin” 烏托邦、惡托邦、 異托邦:從魯迅到劉慈欣, in David D. W. Wang 王德威, Xiandangdai wenxue xinlun: Yili, lunli, dili 現當代文 學新論:義理 倫理 地理 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2014), 294–95. 46. Wang, “Wutuobang, etuobang, yituobang,” 294–95. 47. “Danghong xinxiu zuojia shi ge Liuzhoumei” 當紅新秀作家是個柳州妹, in Dangdai shenghuo bao 當代生活 報, Guangxi xinwen wang 廣西新聞網, last modified August 11, 2011. http://epaper.gxnews.com.cn/ddshb/ html/2011-08/11/content_1864852.htm. 48. Wu Xiujuan, “Gongke nüxing yuedu shichang: ‘Yueduji’ de pinpai fazhan zhanlüe” 攻克女性閱讀市 場:“悅讀紀”的品牌發展戰略, in Xinwen shijie 新聞世界, no. 1 (2013), Xinwen shijie wangzhan 新聞世界網 站, http://xwsj.qikan.com/ArticleView.aspx?titleid=xwsj20130165.
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into the past. The former ignores history, while the latter cannot imagine the future.”49 Meanwhile, in his essay “How about the Present, What about Literature?,” David Wang quotes Paul de Man, observing that the present is located in a blind spot of a “temporal utopia,” in that the present must (first) retell history before it can overcome it, while the historical significance of the present is grounded on a constant process of amnesia and the forgetting of history.50 Accordingly, perhaps time travel, in returning to the past in order to retell the past, is in effect offering an anticipation of an even better future.
Bibliography Chen Pingyuan 陳平原. Chen Pingyuan xiaoshuo shilun ji (zhong) 陳平原小說史論集. Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1997. Feng, Jin. Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Foucault, Michel. Le corps utopique suivi de Les hétérotopies. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2009. ———. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Gongteng Shenxiu 宮藤深秀. Sishi huakai zhi huanhun nü’erguo 四時花開之還魂女兒國. Vols. 1–3. Nanchang: 21 shiji chubanshe, 2007. Hockx, Michel. Internet Literature in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Li Yuping 李玉萍. Wangluo chuanyue xiaoshuo gailun 網絡穿越小說概論. Tianjin: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 2011. Liu Yue 流玥. Feng ba tianxia 1: Xuanwu pian 鳳霸天下 1: 玄武篇. Feng ba tianxia 2: Baihu pian 鳳霸天 下 2: 白虎篇. Feng ba tianxia 3: siguo pian 鳳霸天下 3: 四國篇. Beijing: Zhongguo youyi chuban gongsi, 2007. Nan Fan 南帆. Wenxue de weidu 文學的維度. Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2009. Ouyang Youquan 歐陽友權, ed. Wangluo wenxue gailun 網絡文學概論. Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2008. Pan Hao 潘皓. “Wenxue zuopin zhong de chuanyue shikong muti, jianyi dangdai wangluo chuanyue xiaoshuo” 文學作品中的穿越時空母題,兼議當代網絡穿越小說. Qingnian wenxue 青 年文學, no. 14 (2010), 120–22. Tianxia Guiyuan 天下歸元. Di Huang 帝凰 [Empress Phoenix]. Vols. 1–3. Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2011. ———. Fuyao huanghou 扶搖皇后 [Empress Fuyao] (vols. 1–2), Fuyao huanghou (Zhongjie pian) 扶 搖皇后(終結篇)[Empress Fuyao (final ed.)] (vols. 1–2). Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2011. ———. Huangquan 凰權 [Phoenix power]. Vols. 1–2. Huangquan (wanmei zhongjie) 凰權(完美終 結) [Phoenix power (perfect final ed.)]. Vols. 1–2. Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 2012. ———. “Juan er: Wuji zhi xin; Di shiwu zhang, du chuang chongwei + ru V gonggao” 卷二:無 極之心,第十五章,獨闖重圍+入V公告. In Fuyao huanghou [Empress Fuyao]. Xiaoxiang wang 瀟湘網. Last modified June 30, 2010. http://www.xxsy.net/books/244402/3002585.html. ———. “Wangluo xieshou mianlin bi chuantong zuojia duo henduode kunrao” 網絡寫手面對比 傳統作家多很多的困擾. In Zhongguo zuojia wang 中國作家網. Last modified June 20, 2012. http://www.chinawriter.com.cn. ———. “Wanjie ganxiang—gei wode qinmen” 完結感想—給我的親們. In Fuyao huanghou [Empress Fuyao]. Xiaoxiang wang 瀟湘網. Last modified October 24, 2010. http://www.xxsy.net/books/ 244402/3309737.html. Wang, David Der-wei 王德威. “Fenmo Zhongguo—xingbie, biaoyan, yu guozu rentong: Yuanchu de jiqing/xiangxiang de jiqing” 粉墨中國——性別、表演,與國族認同:原初的激情/想像的激 情. In David D. W. Wang 王德威, Lishi yu kuaishou—Lishi, baoli, xushi 歷史與怪獸——歷史,暴
49. Feng, Romancing the Internet, Producing and Consuming Chinese Web, 16. 50. Wang, Ruhe xiandai, zenyang wenxue?, 13.
Shuang Xu 161 力,敘事 [The monster, that is history: History, violence, narrative], 2nd ed., 171–77. Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 2011. ———. “Kuashiji de jinse zhilian—cong Pinhua baojian dao Shijimo shaonian ai duben” 跨世紀的禁色 之戀——從《品花寶鑒》到《世紀末少年愛讀本》. In David D. W. Wang 王德威, Ruhe xiandai, zenyang wenxue?—Shijiu, ershi shiji zhongwen xiaoshuo xinlun 如何現代,怎樣文學?——十九、 二十世紀中文小說新論 [The making of the modern, the making of a literature: New perspectives on 19th- and 20th-century Chinese fiction], 2nd ed., 101–9. Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 2012. ———. “Wei bei shenzhang de zhengyi—Sanxia wuyi yu Laocan youji xinlun” 未被伸張的正義—— 《三俠五義》與《老殘遊記》新論. In David D. W. Wang 王德威, Ruhe xiandai, zenyang wenxue?—Shijiu, ershi shiji zhongwen xiaoshuo xinlun 如何現代,怎樣文學?——十九、二十世 紀中文小說新論 [The making of the modern, the making of a literature: New perspectives on 19th- and 20th-century Chinese fiction], 2nd ed., 77–100. Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 2012. ———. “Wutuobang, etuobang, yituobang: Cong Lu Xun dao Liu Cixin” 烏托邦、惡托邦、異托 邦:從魯迅到劉慈欣. In David D. W. Wang 王德威, Xiandangdai wenxue xinlun: Yili, lunli, dili現 當代文學新論:義理 倫理 地理, 294–95. Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2014. ———. “Yu jiao yu e—sanbu wanqing xiaxie xiaoshuo” 寓教於惡──三部晚清狎邪小說. In David D. W. Wang 王德威, Xiaoshuo zhongguo—wanqing dao dangdai de zhongwen xiaoshuo 小說中國 ──晚清到當代的中文小說 [Narrating China: Chinese fiction from the late Ching to the contemporary era]. 105–36. Taipei: Maitian chubanshe, 1993. Wang Guoping 王國平. “Wangluo wenxue jidai queli piping ‘zhibiao tixi’” 網絡文學亟待確立批 評‘指標體系’. Last modified June 25, 2019. http://www.hprc.org.cn/leidaxinxi/whjykj/201207/ t20120703_192714.html. Wu Xiujuan 吳秀娟. “Gongke nüxing yuedu shichang: ‘Yueduji’ de pinpai fazhan zhanlüe” 攻克 女性閱讀市場:“悅讀紀”的品牌發展戰略. In Xinwen shijie 新聞世界, no. 1 (2013). Xinwen shijie wangzhan 新聞世界網站. http://xwsj.qikan.com/ArticleView.aspx?titleid=xwsj20130165. Yu Yingshi 余英時. Shi yu Zhongguo wenhua 士與中國文化. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1987. Yuren Erdai 魚人二代. “Wangluo xiaoshuo gen chuantong xiaoshuo de qubie shi duxie hudong” 網絡小說跟傳統小說的區別是讀寫互動. Zhongguo zuojia wang 中國作家網. Last modified December 10, 2013. http://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2013/2013-12-10/184558.html. Zhang Ning 張檸. “Wangluo xiaoshuo de wenxuexing he xin biaozhun—cong yi bu wangluo xiaoshuo tanqi” 網絡小說的文學性和新標準——從一部網絡小說談起. Zhongguo zuojia wang 中 國作家網. Last modified December 11, 2013. http://www.chinawriter.com.cn/2013/2013-1211/184855.html.
Online Sources “Changpingqu—Yuewei changing” 長評區—閱微長評, in “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu.” xxsy. net. Last modified July 3, 2010. http://www.xxsy.net/books/244402/3010932.html. “Danghong xinxiu zuojia shi ge Liuzhoumei” 當紅新秀作家是個柳州妹. In Dangdai shenghuo bao 當代生活報. Guangxi xinwen wang 廣西新聞網. Last modified August 11, 2011. http://epaper. gxnews.com.cn/ddshb/html/2011-08/11/content_1864852.htm. “Fuyao huanghou yuedu mulu”《扶搖皇后》閱讀目錄. xxsy.net. Last modified July 3, 2010. http:// www.xxsy.net/books/244402/default.html. “Jurongshi gong’anju fuweihui ‘sixiang jucuo’ yinling nüjing jianshe ‘ping’an Jurong’” 句容市公 安局婦委會“四項舉措”引領女警建設“平安句容.” www.zjwomen.org. Last modified May 12, 2013. http://www.zjwomen.org/2013/0503/5868.html. “Suiyue cuiren, wangluo zuojia 15 nian zouchu di 4 dai” 歲月催人,網絡作家15年走出第4代. In Guangming ribao 光明日報. Xinhuanet.com. Last modified October 4, 2013. http://news.xinhuanet.com/zgjx/2013-10/04/c_132771717.htm. “Yueduji zuozhe ronghuo 2011 youxiu nüxing wenxuejiang zuijia xinren” 悅讀紀作者榮獲2011優 秀女性文學獎最佳新人. In Tengxun wenxue [Tencent literature]. Last modified August 9, 2012. Last consulted April 9, 2015. http://book.qq.com/a/20120329/000019.htm.
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“Zhi women shanyao jingying de xuancai qingchun” 致我們閃耀警營的炫彩青春. Zhongguo jingying wenhua wang 中國警營文化網. Last modified May 12, 2013. http://www.cpcnets. com/bencandy.php?fid=32&aid=10954&page=4. “Zhongguo zuojia xiehui gongbao (2013 nian di 1 hao)” 中國作家協會公報(2013年第1號). Chinawriter.com.cn. Last modified July 2, 2013. http://www.chinawriter.com.cn/news/2013/ 2013-07-02/166050.html.
Part IV Hong Kong Horizons
10
From Silent China to Sonorous Hong Kong A Literary Sketch
Chien-Hsin Tsai
Prelude Hong Kong is a place that contributes to one of the historical origins of Chinese writers’ and thinkers’ purist visions of utopia. The British annexation of Hong Kong after the Opium Wars was the first of a series of alarms. The sense of failure fanned a burning desire to reinvigorate China so as to eliminate foreigners’ unwelcome presence. As politicians tried their hand at self-reinvigoration through reforms, writers constructed their utopia within narratives. In the late Qing, the utopian impulse was as strong in the political arena as in the literary field. It is etymologically well known that the topos endows utopia with spatiality. The other meaning of topos as a literary motif, however, refers to utopia as a metaphor, through which an author projects his or her imagination of an ideal place. Because Thomas More (1478–1535) relies on his novel Utopia and its language to present his ideas to his readers, I emphasize that utopia is first and foremost rhetorical. As Michael Gerard Kelly notes, to say that utopia is an imagined space is to say that its spatialization “draws language, through speech, into a communicative act.”1 Furthermore, utopia as an economy of figures, the description of imaginary spaces, is shadowed by utopia as a developing theoretical metaphor—by the “utopian” as a position in respect of “reality,” an angle from which it is approached and challenged, a momentum of thought as it hits the given—a dynamic.2
Utopia is a linguistic construct. Before its realization, and surely spatialization, utopia appeals to the explosive power of language, of metaphor, to motivate its believers and propel their many projects. Along the lines of conceptualizing utopia as not so much a space as what Kelly calls “a dynamic,” I survey representations of volatile moments in Hong Kong history in this chapter. These moments represent forces of change, and some are truly dynamic 1. Michael Gerard Kelly, Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France (London: Legenda, 2008), 13. 2. Ibid., 14.
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manifestations of utopian impulses, which also serve to remind us of the banality of reality. They locate Hong Kong at a threshold of change in between an eruptive end and a redemptive beginning. So far, Hong Kong has been able to make the best of the worst of explosions and head off crises. The following discussions follow a chronological order. The first section is a short discussion of Lu Xun’s metaphor of sound. He did not understand sound as a purely physical phenomenon. His is a kind of conceptual explosion that resonates with the readers’ minds, not their ears. The second and third sections draw attention to select representations of actual explosions in wartime and postwar Hong Kong, respectively. Building on the foundation of the preceding sections, the fourth section presents certain contemporary writers’ views of literature’s explosiveness. As an organic whole, the sections not only highlight events that changed the trajectory of Hong Kong’s history but also explain that literature, like notions of utopia, truly provides a site for Sisyphean effort.
The Sound of Literature Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792–1841), a poet who made a name for himself in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, set an example for many Chinese writers to follow. A kind of affective and historical dynamism infuses Gong’s poetics, which he likened to the sounds of wind and thunder that would awaken people and revitalize China. Before he could truly do so with the electrifying power of his poetry, he passed away roughly a year before the conclusion of the First Opium War (1839–1842). We can only speculate how Gong would have felt if he lived to witness China’s defeat and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking that gave Hong Kong over to England. Regardless, his legacy remains, and generations of writers since the late Qing have aspired to his poetics of thunderous roar. Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936) is one such writer, whose frequent use of sound metaphor sends out powerful messages that continue to intrigue readers to this day. In particular, his “Silent China” 無聲的中國 (“Wusheng de zhongguo”) is a distant but strong echo of a quote from one of Gong’s most famous poems: “Alas, ten thousand horses all stand muted” 萬馬齊喑究可哀.3 Gong’s line shows his extensive concerns with Chinese’s inability to rise and take action. Like Gong, Lu Xun hoped to use his language to encourage Chinese people to voice their concerns and to change China. Incidentally, it was in Hong Kong that Lu Xun debuted his poem “Silent China,” not in print, but in a speech that was arguably not only compelling, but indeed, necessary. In February 1927, Lu Xun responded to an invitation to speak at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Hong Kong and gave two speeches. The first was “Silent China” followed by “The Old Tunes are Finished” 老調子已經唱完 (“Laodiaozi yijing changwan”). The two speeches allowed Lu Xun to bring together his ideas about sound as a metaphor and sound as an acoustic utterance. Lu Xun and his Hong Kong audience spoke in different topolects, and the audience response to the speeches remains unclear, as there are no extant recordings. There were nevertheless transcripts of the speeches printed in the newspapers, which allowed him to reach to a readership much 3. For a comparative study of Gong Zizhen and Lu Xun, see Qizhi Zhu, Gong Zizhen Lu Xun bijiao yanjiu 龔 自珍魯迅比較研究 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 2004).
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greater than the YMCA audience that originally attended the events. The transcripts exemplify the complex relationship between sound and script in China. Whatever their regional tongues, people in different parts of China have been able to communicate with one another ever since the first emperor of Qin standardized the Sinitic scripts two millennia before. Printed scripts may be silent at first glance, but they are in fact gramophones of different, vigorous local sounds. I will return to this point in due course. In his speeches and literary writings, Lu Xun encouraged Chinese people to boldly speak their mind and to bravely take action, the first steps toward strengthening China and eventually ridding it of foreign encroachment. Although a number of Chinese people at the time were more raucous than silent as they wrote and published powerful essays to demand change, Lu Xun still claimed to hear no sound. James Reeve Pusey explains that this was because “all the noise came from intellectuals in exile, or from intellectuals writing from the semisafety of the treaty ports. Lu Xun was listening for a response from the Manchu-Chinese government or from the people, from the gawking crowd in that slide. And he heard none.”4 The more prosperous Hong Kong became under colonial rule, the more disappointing the languishing China’s failure to change must have appeared to Lu Xun. The colony of Hong Kong provided an ideal stage for Lu Xun to voice his concern for the salvation of China anew. He took the opportunity to caution his Hong Kong audience against becoming comfortable with the colonizer’s pacification. Lu Xun’s well-known dislike of Confucian classics led to his incendiary comments about British officials. He thus wrote in “The Old Tunes Are Finished”: “The foreigners are smarter than us. At this point, not only can we not assimilate them, they are using our culture that is already corrupted to govern us, a corrupted nation.”5 Four months later, Cecil Clementi (1875–1947), who had assumed the governorship in 1925, founded the first Department of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong with help from Lai Chai Hay 賴濟熙 (Lai Jixi 1865–1937) and other classical scholars. Some believed this was one of the measures Clementi took to deal with the 1925–1926 Canton–Hong Kong strike-boycott and its aftermath. Whatever the motivation, Clementi was a Sinologist in his own right, and his pro-Chinese approach during his term as a colonial official has incurred criticism from some of his British compatriots. Lu Xun had already returned to China when the colonial government established the department in June. And, in August, he wrote and published “A Few Words on Hong Kong” 略談香港 (“Luetan xianggang”), in which he included the transcription of the speech Clementi had given in Cantonese two months earlier. He sarcastically highlighted Clementi’s proficiency in Cantonese before criticizing the governor’s misquotation of four poetic lines from a special issue in the famous anti-Manchu Hubei Student Journal. What really set Lu Xun off was not so much the misquotation as a profound irony that resulted from Clementi’s appeal to Chinese poetics. One of the four lines, and the most celebrated one, in the Chinese revolutionaries’ anti-Manchu quatrain—“To revive the heavenly sounds of the Great Han”—is itself an ethnocentric recontextualization of a line from the Han historian Ban Gu’s 班固 (32–92) “Inscription for the Ceremonial Mounding at the Yanran Mountains” 封燕然山銘 (“Feng Yanranshan 4. James Reeve Pusey, Lu Xun and Evolution (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 30. 5. Lu Xun 魯迅, “Lao diaozi yijing changwan” 老調子已經唱完, in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集, vol. 7 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue), 324.
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ming”). Effectively, Clementi’s was a double recontextualization. In other words, after the revolutionaries took the original line out of context for their own use, Clementi perhaps unknowingly reappropriated that very same line in order to pacify the people of Hong Kong. Lu Xun nevertheless drew attention to only Clementi’s ignorance of the anti-Manchu, and therefore antiforeigner, undertone of the quatrain and made no mention of how the revolutionaries themselves may have also been overreaching. A harsh critic of Confucianism, Lu Xun also used his two YMCA speeches to encourage a break with the morbid tradition and to promote new literature. His presence and his words registered with a number of like-minded writers in Hong Kong, who responded favorably to his call. These writers worked very hard to publish journals in vernacular Chinese. Contrary to classic learning, writings in vernacular Chinese received no endorsement from the colonial government. The writers of new literature braved belittlement from the old school and manifested their determination with the publication of several literary journals. For instance, the first literary journal in vernacular Chinese in Hong Kong, the Companion 伴侶 (Banlü), appeared in 1928. None of these journals lasted long because of insufficient funding. Despite their early exit, they carry epochal significance that cannot be overlooked. It would take another decade for the Hong Kong writers to really lay their foundation. But, once the groundwork was completed, new literature replaced the classics and commanded the attention of the Hong Kong readership. In 1937, ten years after Lu Xun’s visit to Hong Kong, the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. The war introduced new sounds to Hong Kong and to Hong Kong’s literary world. The many sounds in the new literature were better suited to respond to what was happening in the world. As a great number of immigrants left war-torn China and entered Hong Kong to seek peace and shelter, they also brought with them their own tongues and ways of life, adding much to the splendid diversity of the crown jewel. In stark contrast, gunpowder artillery in 1940s Hong Kong—from bombs to machine guns—rang solemnly for the casualties.
Poetry, Fiction, and Bombardment Descriptions of front-line casualties and explosions abound in Chinese fiction during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The war that moved fiction writers also moved poets to vent their mixed feelings of anger and anxiety. Dai Wangshu 戴望舒 (1905–1950) and Xu Chi 徐遲 (1914–1996) were two lyricists who stood out among the émigré writers of Hong Kong during wartime. At the apogee of war, these writers turned to lyrical poems to motivate their readers to withstand military turbulence. Dai Wangshu published a poem, “Battle Cry” 口號 (“Kouhao”), in the January 5, 1946, New Life Daily 新生日報 (Xinsheng ribao). He wrote the poem almost one year before on January 16, 1945, a day full of air raids from the Allied forces: Here come the Allied’s bomber planes. Look how bravely they fly. Show them your jubilation in silence. And don’t ever panic. Look how our enemies scurry about, trembling. Here come the Allied’s bomber planes. Our bones may be crushed and bodies incinerated.
Chien-Hsin Tsai 169 But it would be better than dying in our enemies’ hands. We need be calm and perseverant. Leave the barracks, factories, and ship docks. Here come the Allied’s bomber planes. They urge the enemies to take the road of death. Our time of tribulation won’t go on. The good day of liberation is close by. You see they bring us the news. Here come the bomber planes.6
This lyric poem exudes fury, and Dai had good reason to be angry. In the spring of 1942, the Japanese imprisoned and tortured him. His hardship behind bars led to his development of asthma, which eventually led to his death.7 During his incarceration, poetry was an invaluable source of consolation for Dai. He showed no hesitation in displaying his hatred of the Japanese. He repeats the same line, “Here come the bomber planes,” in all four stanzas of his poem. The changing positions of the line suggest the planes’ circulation—repeatedly approaching and leaving—in the sky. To the Japanese troops in Hong Kong, the bomber planes rang the knell, but Dai rejoiced in the sound of their engines and explosions. Unlike Dai Wangshu, Xu Chi did not suffer in prison. He poetic description of bombardment is contrastingly more abstract. He published “Bombings” 轟炸 (“Hongzha”) in Hong Kong on April 2, 1939. Because the Pacific War had not yet arrived, we know this poem referred to previous experiences, perhaps even sympathetically imagined experiences, of explosions in other Chinese cities: I’ve always loved to ponder bombs in cities during bombardment. I’d count them from sixty to four hundred as if I were strolling down a long street, Counting street numbers to find where my friend lived. But when I came out from the shelter all street numbers on the long street are gone. The child cadavers are always tranquil like this. But women’s dead bodies are so cold. Brave men’s corpses are mean, angry, and patriotic. Our dismembered bodies are steeped in thought. Wherefrom the philosophical system of our nation begins to take shape.8
We don’t know what cities he had in mind, but we do know he wrote the poem in Hong Kong. The poem reveals how Xu took explosive moments and casualties as a starting point to contemplate the dialectic between life and death. His work bespeaks the etymological origin of poetry—that is, poiesis, which originally means “to generate,” “to make.” The poetic invocation of death in explosions illuminates as much a dead end as a new beginning. Where bombing risks decimating history and civilization, poetry not only persists to testify to the fallout but also makes life anew by infusing survivals with new meanings. In the 1941 “Pacific Overture: Arise, Hong Kong!” 太平洋序詩:動員起來香港 (“Taipingyang xushi: Dongyuan qilai Xianggang”), Xu switched from his philosophical tune to a patriotic tenor as Hong Kong became a battleground. The third stanza is particularly sonorous: 6. Zhecun Shi 施蟄存 and Ying Guojing 應國靖, eds., Dai Wangshu 戴望舒 (Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1987), 121. 7. Gregory Lee, Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1989), 80. 8. Xu Chi 徐遲, “Hongzha” 轟炸, in Xingdao ribao, xingzuo 星島日報 • 星座, April 2, 1939.
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The message of vindication—if Hong Kong burns, Tokyo will too—is loud and clear. Setting aside the issue of propaganda, the poem’s title and imagery are reminiscent of a battle hymn. In his memoir, Xu Chi recalled that when the Japanese attacked Hong Kong on December 8, 1941—now widely remembered as the Battle of Hong Kong— people hid in shelters all day. The loud explosions throughout the day “aroused feelings for poetry,” with which he finished the poem at night.10 As explosions in 1941 turned Hong Kong into a war zone and changed the course of its history, they also gave rise to poetry. And, for Xu Chi, poetry provided the means through which to document history. While her male contemporaries, such as Dai Wangshu and Xu Chi, tended to bring a grand, national history into their writings, Eileen Chang 張愛玲 (1920–1995) rested her gaze on the domestic and the quotidian in her writings from this period. Chang rose to fame in Shanghai in the 1940s with a series of masterfully crafted stories. Among them, the novella Love in a Fallen City 傾城之戀 (Qingcheng zhi lian) is set in Hong Kong. Her characters Bai Liusu, a divorced Shanghainese lady, and Fan Liuyuan, a Singaporean Chinese playboy, have since 1943 become household names. General readers and scholars of Eileen Chang have spilled much ink over the couple’s turbulent relationship. But, to the best of my knowledge, no one has discussed the role that bombs play in this particular romance. Indeed, bombs are the catalyst of the relationship. Eileen Chang took great care to lay out the foreshadowing early in the story. For example, one day, Bai and Liu have an opportunity to spend time alone. They go to a gray brick retaining wall near Hong Kong’s famous Repulse Bay Hotel and have a serious conversation: The wall was cool and rough, the color of death. Pressed against the wall, her face bloomed with the opposite hues: red lips, shining eyes—a face of flesh and blood, alive with thought and feeling. “I don’t know why,” said Liuyuan, looking at her, “but this wall makes me think of the old sayings about the end of the world. Someday, when human civilization has been completely destroyed, when everything is burned, burst, utterly collapsed and ruined, maybe this wall will still be here. If, at that time, we can meet at this wall, then maybe, Liusu, you will honestly care about me, and I will honestly care about you.11
9. Xu Chi 徐遲, “Taipingyang xushi: dongyuan qilai Xianggang” 太平洋序詩:動員起來香港, in Xianggang wenxue daxi 1919–1949 xinshi juan 香港文學大系1919–1949新詩卷, ed. Chan Chi Tak [Chen Zhide] 陳智德 (Hong Kong: Shangwu, 2014), 120. 10. Xu Chi 徐遲, Jiangnan xiaozhen 江南小鎮 (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1993), 385. 11. Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City, trans. Karen Kingsbury (New York: New York Review Books, 2007), 139.
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The two do not know the war is approaching. And when the war finally comes, Liuyuan sighs: “This bombing blasted off the ends of an awful lot of stories!”12 But not theirs. As fate, or Eileen Chang, would have it, the wall will survive the bombing, and the two characters will meet again and decide to be together. Explosions crumbled the city and realized the romance; hence the title. Hu Lancheng 胡蘭成 (1906–1981), Chang’s former husband and a superb essayist in his own right, once said, “It is the bullets and bombs that take away Liuyuan’s and Liusu’s witticism of sorts, their selfishness and weakness, and turns them into a simple man and a simple woman of few words. As they become truly concerned about each other, they get married.”13 Chang herself notes how explosions changes people’s lives: “During the eighteen days when Hong Kong was besieged . . . people couldn’t stand the precariousness of life. They [her characters] are eager to hold onto something down to earth, so they get married.”14 As Chang points out, explosions can set into motion something as intangible and abstract as love. By such a transfer, explosion becomes a powerful metaphor for love. In her later novel, Little Reunion 小團圓 (Xiao tuanyuan), Chang would continue to elaborate on the interactions between explosion, romance, and personal as well as national history; so much so that not only does the novel itself becomes a metaphorical bomb, but the author does as well. In this autobiographical novel that touches on her reallife relationship with Hu Lancheng, Chang invites her readers to consider the multiple meanings, and more importantly the explosive consequences, of romance. Chang had a bumpy relationship with Hu especially due to his peculiar economics of love: “His love for one woman accrues only to his romantic investment in many women.”15 Hu’s logic escaped Chang, and she would eventually leave him. One of Hu’s disciples in Taiwan, the acclaimed writer Chu T’ien-hsin 朱天心, after reading Little Reunion, said of Chang, “She was a human bomb that exploded on Hu Lancheng and on herself.”16 Male writers such as Dai Wangshu and Xu Chi engaged with politics by virtue of poetry. Their voices were lyrical but also masculine and loud, reverberating with the sounds of the explosions around them. In contrast, Eileen Chang was decisively feminine. For her, when nations collide, love takes precedence and will eventually prevail. Rather than gender stereotyping, the above contrast provides an initial inquiry into the rich metaphoricity of explosion. Contrary to common belief, explosions are not always associated with annihilation and death. However gloomy the overall situation may appear, explosion also generates new passions or rekindles old ones. The three writers, regardless of their sex, offer valuable examples of ways to conceptualize explosion as a new beginning for self-realization.
12. 13. 14. 15.
Ibid., 160. Hu Lancheng 胡蘭成, Luanshi wentan 亂世文談 (Taipei: Ink, 2009), 19–20. Eileen Chang [Zhang Ailing] 張愛玲, Liuyan 流言 (Taipei: Huangguan, 1968), 45–48. David Der-wei Wang, The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 183. 16. Quoted in Yang Man-fen 楊曼芬, Maodun de yuyue: Zhang Ailing Shanghai guanjian shinian jiemi 矛盾的愉 悅:張愛玲上海關鍵十年揭密 (Taipei: Xiuwei, 2015), 32.
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From Homegrown Pineapples to Fireworks The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 prompted another large influx of immigrants to arrive in Hong Kong from the Mainland. These new arrivals and the now natives (former immigrants and their descendants) worked together to transform Hong Kong into a world manufacturing and financial powerhouse in the decades since the 1950s. When the postwar baby boom generation came of age in the 1960s, a distinctive Hong Kong identity began to form. According to scholars such as Lo Wing Sang, this generation grew up in the British colony, and its understanding of China’s past and presence was fragmented at best.17 Meanwhile, with the colony’s increasing affluence and a growing sense of a local identity, problems of identity become difficult to ignore. 1967 was a watershed in terms of the politics of identity in Hong Kong. In March, disputes between laborers and several companies emerged. Many of the laborers and their supporters from the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions were pro-Communist leftists. In May, the demonstrations escalated into violent confrontations between the laborers and the government. In an echo of the Cultural Revolution that had just begun to play havoc on the Mainland, the leftists orchestrated a so-called anti-British, counterviolence 反英抗暴 (fanying kangbao) campaign, which turned out to be regrettably brutal. The campaign justified its violence as acts to terminate British oppression. Many might have initially sided with the left-wing protestors, but, when they turned to explosives, the shared sentiments rapidly turned into resentments. Desperate, the leftists employed bombing tactics because the government’s large-scale arrests seemed to have weakened their alternate efforts. They planted homemade bombs, or “pineapples,” in various parts of Hong Kong and circulated rumors about their locations to spread the police force thin. This clever plan regrettably ended up costing the lives of unarmed civilians. One particular explosion took the lives of two young girls in North Point on August 21 and infuriated the public. As a result, the collective memory of the event as the “1967 Riots,” in the words of Ray Yep and Robert Bickers, “reflects widespread popular contempt and condemnation of the disturbances that took place in 1967.”18 Even Zhou Enlai 周恩來 (1898–1976), the Chinese Communist leader at the time, disapproved of such terrorism and “called for moderation of Communist tactics in the colony.”19 In 1968, Liu Yichang 劉以鬯 (b. 1918) published a story about the 1967 Riots, called “Turmoil” 動亂 (“Dongluan”), and it remains the most powerful piece about this part of Hong Kong history to this day. An émigré writer from China, Liu moved to Hong Kong in 1948. After his five-year expatriation in Southeast Asia from 1952 to 1957, he returned to Hong Kong and devoted himself to journalism and literature. In one story written between 1967 and 1969, “Chain” 鏈 (“Lian”), Liu documents ten characters’ lives on November 18, 1967. He casually mentions the “bombs” to show how they had 17. Lo Wing Sang [Luo Yongsheng] 羅永生, “Xianggang bentu yishi de qianshi jinsheng,” 香港本土意識的前 世今生 Sixiang 思想 26 (Taipei: Lianjing), 122–23, 113–42. 18. Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, “Studying the 1967 Riots: An Overdue Project,” in May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, ed. Robert Bickers and Ray Yep (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 4–5 (1–18). 19. Lawrence Cheuk-yin Wong, “The 1967 Riots: A Legitimacy Crisis?,” in Bickers and Yep, May Days in Hong Kong, 42.
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become an integral part of life. “Turmoil” consists of fourteen short narratives. With Liu’s personification, fourteen different inanimate objects—from a trashcan to a rock, a soda bottle, a corpse—relay what they have witnessed during a heated moment in history. Multiple perspectives are sources of historical evaluations. Among the multiple voices, a bomb delivered a momentous soliloquy: I am a bomb. People nickname me “homegrown pineapple.” I think this moniker is much more elegant than “bomb.” As crowds ran away to street sides from the police’s tear gas, someone put me in front of that tramcar. An ambulance took the injured tram driver to somewhere else. The big street quieted down quickly. There was no one around me. And the police were 70, 80 yards away from me. I felt lonely. The chaotic scene suddenly lacked the rhythm of life, and this made me all the more confused about this world. Just a moment ago, it was so boisterous but now all that remains is the unbearable silence. I don’t know what I am waiting for. And then, an explosive specialist walked near me in attire that made him look obese.20
As the bomb contemplates its presence, it unravels a thoughtful ontological reflection on violence: it is those who exercise violence, not violence per se, that are violent. This is Liu’s critical reflection on how politics and ideology may push themselves over the edge and implode. Before the bomb can comprehend the purpose of its existence, its monologue halts. Liu subsequently switches to the witness of the “streetlight” for a different historical reconstruction: An explosive specialist detonated that bomb. When it exploded, a number of shards flew past me but I didn’t get hurt. I saw that the turmoil threw everything into disarray and a terrifying dead air. I wish I could turn down my brightness.21
Here Liu does not elaborate the long history of light as a potent metaphor for truth and its revealing association with enlightenment; his approach is nevertheless intriguing. As Liu makes paradoxically clear, precisely because the streetlight cannot help but cast light, history then does not disappear into the dark night. No doubt, Liu’s are objects of history. They showcase the material circumstances of people from a specific historical period. Studying them puts us in close proximity to the conditions of a given past. Liu is not a historian of material culture. A perceptive writer with historical concerns notwithstanding, he personifies things to solicit self-reflection and historical introspection. After the riots faded out late in 1967, Hong Kong society enjoyed a relatively peaceful period. As Ming Sing explains, the colonial government gained a moderate level of public support “by its capacity to satisfy public demands for three crucial legitimating bases: prosperity, stability, and civil liberties.”22 Fear and anxiety resurfaced when China and the Great Britain signed a Joint Declaration on December 19, 1984, and scheduled the handover of Hong Kong sovereignty to occur on July 1, 1997. Both filmmakers and writers have invested much energy in pondering the handover in works that are replete with gruesome episodes of murder and madness. Take Michael 20. Liu Yichang 劉以鬯, “Dongluan” 動亂, in Liu Yichang juan 劉以鬯卷 (Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1991), 168. 21. Ibid., 169. 22. Ming Sing, “Hong Kong at the Crossroads: Public Pressure for Democratic Reform,” in Politics and Government in Hong Kong: Crisis under Chinese Sovereignty, ed. Ming Sing (New York: Routledge, 2009), 114 (112–35).
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Berry’s eloquence: “The Handover is the site of endless mutations of projected violence, both real and imaginary. This anticipatory trauma, while intricately connected to the Tiananmen complex, is also part of a larger historical continuum that reaches much further back into the past—and the popular imagination of the past.”23 Indeed, looking further back into Hong Kong’s past, it was the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century that began the island’s colonial chapter and opened China up for trade. And looking further into the history of the Opium Wars, it becomes clear that “the first gunboats arrived in Hong Kong in 1857, and for the next three years they proved their worth, destroying Chinese war junks, supporting land operations and bombarding enemy positions.”24 In retrospect, it is equally ironic and coincidental that cases of explosions began and ended British colonialism in Hong Kong. On July 1, 1997, a hundred million Hong Kong dollars’ worth of fireworks exploded over the Victoria Harbour to celebrate the handover. The Hong Kong writer Wong Bik-wan 黃碧雲 sensitively notices the irony of history. In a 1997 short story, “Lust” 好欲 (“Haoyu”), she relays Hong Kong’s changing identity through the eyes of a Chinese butler at the Government House. Wong Ho-yiu 王可饒 (Wang Kerao) has served several British governors throughout his long-term tenure. His meticulousness is indispensable to the maintenance of the governor’s residence. On the evening of the handover, Wong dutifully checks around the house for the last time. The governor has already gone to bed, as no light comes out from his room, and the only noise sneaks in from outside. People’s cheers for the handover travel from the foot of the Government Hill to the house atop. The distant night sky over the harbor is made luminous by the celebratory fireworks, and the spectacular explosion sparks, visibly and steadily, pulse out echoes of darkness and of history. “Lost City” 失城 (“Shicheng”) is another of Wong’s most discussed stories that deals with the anticipation of the handover. Published three years before Hong Kong’s return, it traces the psychological trajectory of a couple, Chan Lo Yuen (Chen Luyuan) and Chiu Mei (Zhao Mei), in relation to their immigration to Canada. The Joint Declaration triggers their transnational journey and, by extension, everything that happens afterward. The story memorably expounds on the multiple meanings of “lost city”: Chan’s ongoing fantasy about murdering his wife and their four children; Chiu beginning to lose her mind under the pressure of living in a foreign city; the two losing their home in Hong Kong when they immigrate to Canada; the Qing empire’s loss of Hong Kong to the British; and, finally, there lurks Britain’s anticipatory loss of its crown jewel within a few years.25 All of these losses compound one another and symbolize the interlinking explosions of varied scales and categories: the island’s economic boom, the people’s volcanic emotional burst, and the mass migration from Hong Kong. Fireworks were the most explosive accompaniment to the handover, and they gestured toward other violent events behind the peaceful transfer of sovereignty. The Hong Kong director Fruit Chan 陳果 vividly presents that irony in The Longest Summer 去年煙花特別多 (Qunian yanhua tebieduo). This 1998 film is the second installment of Chan’s Hong Kong Trilogy, following the 1997 Made in Hong Kong and followed by the 1999 Little Cheung. The Longest Summer’s protagonist, Ga-yin, finds himself without a 23. Michael Berry, A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 379. 24. Angus Konstam and Paul Wright, Gunboats of World War I (Oxford: Osprey, 2015), 7. 25. Berry, A History of Pain, 368–69.
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career when the colonial government disbands the Hong Kong Military Service Corps— the cadre of Chinese soldiers serving in the British garrison on the island. Chan probes the lives of the disaffected and disadvantaged working class in Hong Kong through his ingenious and famous blend of narrative and visual registers. The film’s Chinese title readily taps into the ambiguous relation fireworks have to politics and history: Qunian yanhua tebieduo, literally, “Last year’s fireworks were extraordinarily rich.” As “rich” (duo) insinuates, there were many fireworks displays in 1997, and they were all extravagant. One may well wonder whether Hong Kong and China would have wasted the wonderful opportunities to dazzle the global audience had there been no fireworks. After all, as Shu-mei Shih astutely observes, “Theories that posit that spectacle is a primary means of authenticating power appear to have found their textbook examples in the events of July 1, 1997.”26 In an interview, Fruit Chan makes an uncanny linkage between shooting footage and shooting people. Strangely, but perhaps unsurprisingly, what sustain such linkages are the fireworks. Chan had planned to shoot the fireworks that celebrated the grand opening of the Tsing Ma Bridge in April 1997. Upon hearing that two other directors, Mabel Cheung (Zhang Wanling) and Tsui Hark, had the same plan, he had a slight change of heart. Chan thus recalls his conversation with one of the actors, Sam Lee: “Okay, they’re going to shoot the fireworks, we’ll shoot someone getting shot!” So we rented two cameras and showed up there on the waterside first thing in the morning to get a good place for our cameras. We shot across from the bridge, getting a lot of footage of the fireworks. I told Sam to walk into frame about two minutes into the fireworks display for the murder scene [which was eventually used in The Longest Summer].27
Imprinting imagery of violence—fireworks, a watermelon mistaken as a bomb, a young man with a large hole through his cheeks, gunfights—permeates and makes the cinematic narrative inherently explosive. In European traditions, as Simon Werrett explains, “fireworks provided an arena for articulating notions of politics, religion, economy, and history in brilliant spectacles and ingenious displays. They also constituted a vibrant practice around which Europeans debated the identities of science and art, their relations, definitions, and antagonisms.”28 The above examples show that fireworks function similarly in Hong Kong. They may not necessarily instigate a debate about the place of art and science in Hong Kong, but they most certainly find their ways into the works of Wong Bik-wan and Fruit Chan. Subsequently, their textual and cinematic fireworks light up certain dark corners of society and history.
Literature as Explosion Authors in Hong Kong and elsewhere have taken advantage of the upheavals created by war to fuel their creative inclinations. To the extent that certain works of literature 26. Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 140. 27. Michael Berry, Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 470–71. 28. Simon Werrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010), 235.
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have successfully contributed to military recruitment and guided war efforts, “the pen,” as the saying goes, “is mightier than the sword.” Chinese writers such as Gong Zizhen believed that the force of literature rivaled that of nature. Metonymically, literature is dynamite, too. According to Lynne Huffer, Michel Foucault invoked precisely such a metonym in his preface to the 1972 French revised edition of History of Madness. Referring to the explosive reaction that he thought occurs when a book meets its reader, Foucault writes, “I think of my books as mines, explosives.”29 Several of Foucault’s books have indeed altered the landscape of critical theory. Although writing in a locality and a time very different from Foucault’s, Hong Kong authors share a view that is strikingly similar. Dung Kai Cheung 董啟章 (Dong Qizhang), a pillar of contemporary Hong Kong literature, believes deeply in the power of literature. He once told his audience in a public speech: Writers that are standing on the edge of the epoch or behind it must not submerge themselves in the mainstream, including that of the authority or anti-authority. Precisely because it refuses to harmonize with any main melodies, literature risks silence. Or it simply uses its silence to emit a lasting resonance across space and time. We can no longer expect literature to be as explosive as the cosmic Big Bang, but we may think of literature as the cosmic microwave background that the Big Bang created, which witnesses the Universe’s history and continues to exert its influence in ways that are almost invisible and immeasurable for the past 138 billion years.30
Dung harbors the conviction that the many effects of a literary work are not different from the Big Bang’s explosive outcomes. Even if an explosion is short lived, its aftermath endures. On the same occasion, Dung further piqued his audience’s interest as he juxtaposed his Big Bang theory of literature to a philological account of a well-known mythological tale: The pan in Pandora means “all,” and dora means “gift.” Pandora is a gift from Zeus to mankind. She is a doll created by the Gods together. . . . Another gift accompanies Pandora, that is, the box that contains all evils of the world. So the whole incident seems like a suicidal terrorist attack that the Gods orchestrated, and Pandora is the humanbomb. . . . The instrumentality of Pandora’s box and the malicious intent of the gift-giver aside, there exists a characteristic imagery. Appropriately, literature is a gift that brings about terror. As far as worldly convention and normalcy is concerned, literature carries a component of terror, more often than not.31
Dung started a chain of resignification where literature, gift, suicide bomber, explosion, and terrorism become mutually evocative. Dung’s view of the terror of literature is reminiscent of a sensation of emotional rejuvenation that goes hand-in-hand with a spiritual renewal, which scholars of Greek tragedy refer to as the “tragic catharsis.” For Dung, literature reflects and redirects our internal fears toward something or someone 29. Quoted in Lynne Huffer, Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), xi. 30. Dung Kai Chung [Dong Qizhang] 董啟章, “Wenxue shenghuo: Xiezuo, ziwo, yu shijie,” 文學生活:寫作, 自我,與世界, accessed: February 26, 2015, http://hkbookfair.hktdc.com/upload/docs/eventpg/authorofyear1.pdf, 2, my italics. For the audiovisual recording of the speech, see https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Fonlgzo2l7Q (accessed: September 13, 2015). 31. Dung, “Wenxue shenghuo,” 4.
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outside of ourselves so as to puncture and purge them. If only for the thrill and the subsequent sense of purgation, literature has its place in our life. To carry on Dung’s philology: dora as “gift” is related to dosis, now known as “doses,” the administered amount of medicine. This brings us to Socrates’s famous association of the text to a drug—a pharmakon. Just like a pharmakon, literature is at once a drug and a remedy. A late Qing and early Republican intellectual, Liang Qichao also recognized the debilitating and the nurturing force of Chinese fiction and called for a reform of Chinese people through a reform of old Chinese fiction. Dung’s pairings of “bomb and gift, retaliation and sharing, terror and compassion, devil and hope” are not inviolable dichotomies; rather, they represent his deconstructive, and highly ethical, view of literature that offers a reconceptualization of explosion.32 We are living in what Rey Chow calls “the age of world target” when virtually all things may fall victim to wars and explosions on various scales. To minimize conflict, what we need is not so much the effort to tell friend from foe especially when the policed boundaries between self and other are never clear cut in the first place. Chow is right to emphasize that the mentality of “know thine enemy” has informed area studies and guided the production of literature and knowledge during the Cold War.33 Such ways of thinking need not continue today. Few would agree with the justification that wars are indispensable to the struggle for utopia; in such cases, utopia becomes dystopia. If wars and explosions must happen, let them be in literature. This is Dung’s view of how literature may explode and move society thoughtfully forward. Dung’s speech is enlightening for another, related cause. He wrote his script in Mandarin but read it in Cantonese. It was only reasonable that he delivered the speech in Cantonese to a Hong Kong audience. Doing so, he also spoke his local identity into existence. Perhaps unintended, this practice cast light on the volatile relationship between sound and script in Chinese and Sinophone literature and raises the questions: How does a reader read? Can a writer dictate a reader’s way of reading? Can a reader detect a writer’s voice through written words and imitate it in recitation? These issues highlight certain incongruities between reading as a silent and solitary activity and reading as enunciating words. People are less likely to raise any eyebrows when the writers and the readers are the same person. Still these questions pertain very intimately to the theoretical concerns about the representation of sound in writing and about whether Sinitic scripts are adequate gramophones of local sounds. Some writers in Hong Kong assert their local identity by virtue of writing in Cantonese with uncommon Sinitic scripts or scripts only the locals understand.34 Dung has done the same in the past, although he did not do it for this speech. Scholarly consensus has it that the sound of literature is at best a textual configuration of the “real” sound.35 Literature does not write itself, and the sound of literature needs a reader, in 32. Ibid. 33. Rey Chow, The Age of the World Target (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 25–44. 34. For a discussion of written Cantonese in the modern time, see Don Snow, Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of A Written Chinese Vernacular (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), 125–74. 35. Proponents of phonocentrism argue that written language is inherently inferior to speech. The core of such argument reveals a strong desire for a seamless representation in language of what the mind sees. Phonocentric beliefs aside, no theorists of any writings systems can unproblematically claim that there exists a perfect unity between language and the world. Such unity is unrealizable and virtually utopian. In this regard, even if More’s utopia does exist, his representation is already at least one degree removed from it.
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both senses of the word, so as to become audible. No two people ever have the same voice on paper. Of course, given the anatomy and physiology of sound production, rarely do individuals sound alike when they speak. This is also to say that the visual power of scripts has no jurisdiction over a reader’s enunciation. Here I am drawing attention not so much to the different qualities of individual voices as to the existing but oft-ignored rift between cognition and vocalization of Mandarin and, by extension, the articulation of Chineseness. While cognitive linguistic studies will no doubt offer more scientific explanations, it is safe to surmise that even when Dung opts for standard Mandarin script in writing, it is Cantonese that resounds in his mind.36 As a matter of fact, according to the Hong Kong literary critic Lee Chi Hoi 李智海 (Li Zhihai), whenever “we” Hong Kong authors write in standard Mandarin script, “we” read every word silently in Cantonese.37 Lee makes the sweeping claim in his preface to The Dictionary of Twin Cities (Shuangcheng cidian), a two-volume collection of short stories by Hong Kong writers Hon Lai Chu 韓麗珠 (Han Lizhu) and Tse Hiu Hung 謝曉虹 (Xie Xiaohong). In the preface, he writes that Hong Kong needs to become the guardian of the Cantonese language especially when the Chinese government has banned Cantonese broadcast in Guangzhou. The Chinese government’s effort at linguistic assimilation makes recounting the stories of Hong Kong increasingly difficult, and this worries Lee immensely. Lee heightens his tone of endorsement in the preface when he compares literature to explosion: The Cantonese language, given that its varying tones bring about a meaningful condensation and refinement of word usage, is an emotionally exuberant language. So writing is like laying mines in a vast lawn. The sense of crisis, the collective sense of crisis, perhaps can combine all of the society’s cultural force and make it exploded. . . . The Dictionary of Twin Cities is precisely in between going underground and exploding, eager for action. Perhaps someone has already unintentionally stepped on the landmine. When that person couldn’t resist moving his or her foot.38
The posthandover promotion of putonghua, for Lee, comes at the expense of Cantonese speakers. Seemingly, he perceives the hegemony of putonghua to be the source of the collective sense of crisis. He praises the stories’ ability to move people. Such ability comes from the power of the Cantonese language, which is a result of its emotionally charged tonal quality. Whether a reader of Mandarin who knows no Cantonese can still experience the same affective combustion leaves room for discussion. Lee offers no explanation as to how tones affect emotion. Nevertheless, his point on speaking and writing a local identity into existence is unmistakable. It is also one of the major concerns that inform the theorization of Sinophone studies. Shu-mei Shih suggests that pre-1997 Hong Kong exemplified “the emergence of a nativist fetishization of Cantonese against the looming hegemony of standard putonghua.”39 Fetishization or not, even as Mandarin is a part 36. Without considering the issue of rhymes and tones and the evolution of Sinitic languages, it is at least quite common that when a native speaker of Cantonese recites a classical-style Chinese poem, the preferred language is Cantonese. 37. Lee Chi Hoi [Li Zhihai] 李智海, preface 序言 to Shuangcheng cidian I, 雙城辭典上, by Hon Lai Chu [Han Lizhu] 韓麗珠 and Tse Hiu Hung [Xie Xiaohong] 謝曉虹 (Taipei: Lianjing, 2012), 8–9. 38. Ibid. 39. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 31.
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of the language curriculum now, Cantonese remains the language most Hong Kong natives prefer in daily communication. To the extent that speaking Cantonese and reading Sinitic scripts in Cantonese helps realize a local identity, Hong Kong literature stands as the cultural practice of “Sinophone articulation” that “disrupts the symbolic totality that is Chinese and instead projects the possibility of a new symbolization beyond reified Chinese and Chineseness.”40 Lee understands such disruption as explosion and renders Hong Kong literature more than an example of Sinophone articulation. Indeed, both Hong Kong and Hong Kong literature stand as an emplacement of what I would term the “Sinophone explosion,” which repeats the many dynamically expressive instances of linguistic and identificatory fragmentation and hybridization during the colonial period and thereafter. Historically, Sinophone explosion also recalls the key moments that gave rise to such instances.
Coda Literature is both a conceptualization and a representation of sound. On the one hand, the kind of conceptual sounds writers make regarding Hong Kong’s history are especially explosive, and, on the others, such writers as Eileen Chang also pay close attention to onomatopoeia. Chang accentuated Love in a Fallen City and Little Reunion with phonetic compounds to transform the sounds of bullets and bombs into scripts with various strokes. Most adjectives that describe sounds do not explain the specific quality of sounds. To make sounds register in the reader’s mind, writers rely on trope and analogy. In comparison, the representation of sound is an easier task for filmmakers. Critics have praised Fruit Chan’s visual accomplishment, but most have overlooked his acoustic sensitivity. The Longest Summer prominently features his creative use of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds. The playing of “Auld Lang Syne” in the movie rouses a feeling of nostalgia, and a mere mention of the well-known Communist revolutionary tune “Sing a Folk Song for the Party” 唱支山歌給黨聽 (“Chang zhi shan’ge gei dang ting”) adds much drama. These tunes have unique symbolic capital. Chan also utilizes background sounds in different languages—Cantonese, English, and Mandarin—and the characters’ voices to emphasize Hong Kong people’s identity that alters by context. As Howard Choy aptly notices, The Longest Summer should remind the Hong Kong audience that Cantonese is not the uniform dialect of Hong Kong.41 For instance, the protagonist’s parents speak Cantonese with varying degrees of Teochew accent because they come from the region in eastern Canton Province. Furthermore, what Choy says in the following is characteristically illustrative of Sinophone explosion: The linguistic hybridism of Hong Kong is also showcased in the docudrama of The Longest Summer dated from 27 June through 1 July 1997 with a collage of Cantonese and Mandarin newscasts, a battle of languages between Governor Chris Patten’s criticism of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in British English and the PLA’s defence in authentic Mandarin, Prince Charles’s farewell speech and President Jiang’s inauguration address, then a pro-China group’s welcome of the PLA in Putonghua, a voice-over interview in Taiwanese Guoyu 國語, and the Special Administrative Region government official’s oaths of allegiance in “poor” Putonghua. All these end up in the Hong Kong Chinese 40. Ibid., 35. 41. Howard Y. F. Choy, “Linguistic Identity in Fruit Chan’s 1997 Trilogy,” in World Cinema and the Visual Arts, ed. David Gallagher (London: Anthem Press, 2012), 91, 89–98.
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From Silent China to Sonorous Hong Kong police office being reprimanded by his bilingual (Cantonese and English) foreign boss upon wrongly identifying and arresting the retired soldiers.42
And all these resonate with the extremely loud, if spasmodic, sounds of the glittering fireworks. Admittedly, these are all sounds of the past. What would Sinophone explosion look or sound like in the future? I have moved from Lu Xun’s use of sound metaphor in 1927, wartime, the riots in 1967, and the fireworks displays in 1997. To begin to think about the possible answers to the question, and to conclude this essay, I turn to Fruit Chan’s 2014 film, The Midnight After 那夜凌晨,我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅Van (Naye lingchen, wozuoshangle Wangjiao kaiwang Dapu de Hong van), which portrays an event that will have taken place in 2017. It is a sci-fi horror in which utopia and dystopia are inseparable. The Midnight After is a film adaptation of the celebrated eponymous web novel. A writer by the name of Pizza serialized the story in Golden, a popular internet forum, between February and July 2012. The book came out shortly after the serialization ended. The novel, and its previous incarnation, is a tailored example of Hong Kong literature in written Cantonese, with overflowing local slang and ubiquitous cusswords. Chan’s adaptation stays true to the feisty colloquialism. But just when he begins to solve some of the mysteries he has built up, the film ends abruptly, without even a deus ex machina. In the wee hours of February 1, 2012, a sixteen-seat red van fills up in Mong Kok and leaves for Tai Po. The plot thickens as the passengers die one after another soon after they get off the bus. All deaths are related to an explosion that takes place in 2017. How could a future event change the past? Fans of the web novel know that all the mysteries point to the explosion, which Chan willfully neglects to include in his film. On January 11, 2017, a catastrophic explosion occurs at the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant in neighboring Shenzhen, China, and renders Hong Kong uninhabitable. As it turns out, the government implants false memories into select survivors and sends them back to the radioactive zone, and back to the past. All characters initially believe that the year is 2012. The illusion soon begins to implode and crumble. A few people notice certain oddities as the original memories surface sporadically and interfere with the false ones. The government’s scheme of “looking backward” results in the characters’ attempt to go “back to the future.” But their attempt is futile from the outset. Not only has the future already come and left; it exists in the past. The loop of doom aside, something else warrants our attention. About one hour into the film, a few male characters capture a Japanese man in a CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) protective suit and launch an interrogation. One of the passengers tells the Japanese captive to speak to Google Translate, which then translates his words into Mandarin. What happens next shocks the Hong Kong locals: Google Translate cannot understand Cantonese. Much to his disbelief, one passenger belches, “It doesn’t even care for Hong Kong people.” Reluctantly, the interrogator switches to Mandarin. This episode is a stark contrast to Lu Xun’s speech, “Silent China,” where he urged people in Hong Kong to speak their mind and emotions in their own words. In the cinema of postapocalyptic Hong Kong, nine decades after Lu Xun’s speech and two after the handover, when the locals try to speak in their own tongue, even the machine 42. Ibid., 95.
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will not accept it. The Lu Xunesque exclamation—“It doesn’t even care for Hong Kong people”—expresses a strong sense of deprivation and frustration that breeds distrust. As their dystopian fantasies make amply clear, however, both Pizza and Fruit Chan have spoken their mind, all the while shooting colloquial wisecracks that are impossible to dodge and difficult to translate. The explosion of silence is yet to arrive. Hong Kong is still sonorous and suggestively so. Explosions that change history may have begun as accidents, but the thunderous roars in and of Hong Kong literature and cinema never are.
Bibliography English Berry, Michael. Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. ———. A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Bickers, Robert, and Ray Yep. “Studying the 1967 Riots: An Overdue Project.” In May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, edited by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, 1–18. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Chang, Eileen. Love in a Fallen City. Translated by Karen Kingsbury. New York: New York Review of Books, 2007. Chow, Rey. The Age of the World Target. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Choy, Howard Y. F. “Linguistic Identity in Fruit Chan’s 1997 Trilogy.” In World Cinema and the Visual Arts, edited by David Gallagher, 89–98. London: Anthem Press, 2012. Huffer, Lynne. Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Kelly, Michael Gerard. Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France. London: Legenda, 2008. Konstam, Angus, and Paul Wright. Gunboats of World War I. Oxford: Osprey, 2015. Lee, Gregory. Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1989. Pusey, James Reeve. Lu Xun and Evolution. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Shih, Shu-mei. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Sing, Ming. “Hong Kong at the Crossroads: Public Pressure for Democratic Reform.” In Politics and Government in Hong Kong: Crisis under Chinese Sovereignty, edited by Ming Sing, 112–35. New York: Routledge, 2009. Snow, Don. Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004. Werrett, Simon. Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Wang, David Der-wei. The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 183. Wong, Lawrence Cheuk-yin. “The 1967 Riots: A Legitimacy Crisis?” In May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967, edited by Robert Bickers and Ray Yep, 37–52. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
Chinese Chang, Eileen [Zhang Ailing] 張愛玲. Liuyan 流言. Taipei: Huangguan, 1968.
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Dung Kai Chung [Dong Qizhang] 董啟章. “Wenxue shenghuo: Xiezuo, ziwo, yu shijie” 文學生 活:寫作,自我,與世界. Accessed: February 26, 2015. http://hkbookfair.hktdc.com/upload/ docs/eventpg/authorofyear1.pdf. Hu Lancheng 胡蘭成. Luanshi wentan 亂世文談. Taipei: Ink, 2009. Lee Chi Hoi [Li Zhihai] 李智海. Preface 序言 to Shuangcheng cidian I 雙城辭典上, by Hon Lai Chu [Han Lizhu] 韓麗珠 and Tse Hiu Hung [Xie Xiaohong] 謝曉虹, 6–12. Taipei: Lianjing, 2012. Liu Yichang 劉以鬯. “Dongluan” 動亂. In Liu Yichang juan 劉以鬯卷. Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1991. Lo Wing Sang [Luo Yongsheng] 羅永生. “Xianggang bentu yishi de qianshi jinsheng” 香港本土意 識的前世今生. In Sixiang 思想 26, 113–42. Taipei: Lianjing, 2014. Lu Xun 魯迅. “Lao diaozi yijing changwan” 老調子已經唱完. In Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集, vol. 7, 321–29. Beijing: Renmin wenxue. Shi Zhecun 施蟄存, and Ying Guojing 應國靖, eds. Dai Wangshu 戴望舒. Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1987. Xu Chi 徐遲. “Hongzha” 轟炸. In Xingdao ribao, xingzuo 星島日報 • 星座, April 2, 1939. ———. Jiangnan xiaozhen 江南小鎮. Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1993. ———. “Taipingyang xushi: dongyuan qilai Xianggang” 太平洋序詩:動員起來香港. In Xianggang wenxue daxi 1919–1949 xinshi juan 香港文學大系1919–1949新詩卷, edited by Chan Chi Tak [Chen Zhide] 陳智德, 119–20. Hong Kong: Shangwu, 2014. Yang Man-fen 楊曼芬. Maodun de yuyue: Zhang Ailing Shanghai guanjian shinian jiemi 矛盾的愉悅: 張愛玲上海關鍵十年揭密. Taipei: Xiuwei, 2015. Zhu Qizhi 朱奇志. Gong Zizhen Lu Xun bijiao yanjiu 龔自珍魯迅比較研究. Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 2004.
11
Before and after The Midnight After Occupy Central’s Specters of Utopia and Dystopia
Carlos Rojas
Set in one of the most densely populated cities of the world, Fruit Chan’s 2014 film The Midnight After (那夜凌晨,我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅VAN; the film’s full Chinese title could be translated as “In that night’s dawn, I boarded a red van going from Mong Kok to Tai Po”) opens with a frenetic sequence that rapidly introduces more than a dozen unrelated characters who proceed to board a red commuter minibus running from Mong Kok in Kowloon to Tai Po in Hong Kong’s New Territories. The bus enters the Lion Rock Tunnel connecting Kowloon to the New Territories, but when it re-emerges on the other side the previously bustling metropolis has suddenly become a virtual ghost town. Other than the minibus and its passengers, all people and vehicles have vanished from the city’s streets. The film then builds on a set of familiar horror conventions to depict the passengers being drawn together in the face of adversity, as they struggle to survive and make sense of their situation. Five months after The Midnight After began its theatrical run in April 2014, Hong Kong’s Central District was filled with tens of thousands of prodemocracy protesters. Building on recent Hong Kong protests, including the annual June 4 vigils and July 1 marches, while also resonating with international protests ranging from the Jasmine Revolution that began in Tunisia in 2010 to the Occupy movement that began on New York’s Wall Street in late 2011, the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests attracted considerable interest not only in Hong Kong but also around the world. In principle, the 2014 protests were motivated by specific concerns with how Hong Kong’s next chief executive would be nominated and elected in 2017, but they also helped to anchor a wider array of hopes and anxieties—including considerations specific to Hong Kong as well as others with broader ramifications. Although the historical juxtaposition of the release of Chan’s film to the Umbrella Movement was effectively coincidental, this coincidence is nevertheless instructive. In particular, between The Midnight After and the Umbrella Movement we find a stark contrast between a fictional portrayal of a virtually empty metropolis, on one hand, and a mass demonstration that filled Hong Kong’s streets with countless protesters, on the other; and while the Umbrella Movement was driven by a utopian faith in the power of community and the possibility of political transformation, The Midnight After instead
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presents a dystopian vision of a society in a state of virtual collapse, in which time literally appears to have ground to a halt. Although these two societal visions might appear antithetical, I will argue that they actually represent two sides of the same coin—in that it is precisely in its dystopian dimensions that The Midnight After illustrates most clearly the conditions of possibility on which utopian efforts like the Umbrella Movement are necessarily predicated. The communal bonds and transhistorical ties underscored by the prodemocracy movement, in other words, are made possible by the sorts of social and temporal ruptures that are foregrounded in Fruit Chan’s film, and it is precisely the dystopian structural fragmentation explored in the film that makes possible the reform movement’s utopian vision.
Communitas Attracting countless Hong Kongers from different walks of life, the 2014 prodemocracy protests were spearheaded by several distinct constituencies—including the reform group Occupy Central with Love and Peace, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, and another group known as Scholarism—which coalesced into what came to be popularly known as the Umbrella Movement. While each of the groups that participated in the protests shared a concern with preserving Hong Kong’s political sovereignty, specifically its citizens’ ability to democratically elect a chief executive of their choice, all the groups (and the individuals of which those same groups were composed) were motivated by a distinct set of concerns and objectives. The Umbrella Movement’s strength, accordingly, lay in its ability to bring together these disparate components into a coherent political unit. The resulting community was very real, in that it featured tangible social bonds and networks, but at the same time it was “imagined,” in Benedict Anderson’s sense, in that it relied on its members’ ability to projectively identify with a social collective that was much larger than any individual member could get to know in person.1 The core protagonists in Chan’s The Midnight After, meanwhile, are a similarly motley group who, over the course of the film, gradually coalesce into a miniature community. We first see the bus driver—a pot-bellied middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt with a slightly risqué slogan—playing mahjong with some friends, when another driver calls him up and, at the last minute, asks him to cover his bus route from Mong Kok to Tai Po. The mahjong player reluctantly agrees and proceeds to pick up an eclectic mix of passengers in Mong Kok—including young people returning home after a night out on the town, a handful of middle-aged people, and even a red-eyed cocaine addict who slips onto the bus to escape drug dealers who are pursuing him. The passengers all board the bus separately or in small groups, and they initially display little more than idle curiosity in one another. As the film progresses, however, a core set of passengers begins to coalesce into a miniature community as they struggle to survive and make sense of what has happened. In its focus on the development of social bonds between relative strangers, accordingly, Chan’s film explores in fictional form the sociopolitical dynamics that would drive the process of community formation during the subsequent Umbrella Movement. 1. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 2006).
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This process of protean community formation begins as soon as the bus passengers belatedly realize that the streets through which they are riding have been left completely empty, whereupon several of them propose competing theories of what happened. For instance, one passenger (a former Triad member) suggests that perhaps the bus has crashed and killed everyone aboard, and this is the afterlife; while another (who works as an insurance broker and a fortune teller) offers an astrological explanation, noting that “in 2012, the Earth entered the Photon Belt; it’s moving from the third dimension into the fourth, and this depopulated space we’re in is our new world.” Although the passengers are unable to reach a consensus on what has happened to them, in discussing these different possibilities, together with the options before them, they begin to establish a shared discursive space. Next, the passengers debate whether to remain on the bus or set off on foot. Although one of the young women notes that whenever characters in horror movies disperse they invariably end up getting killed off one by one, the cohort nevertheless decides to leave the bus and proceed on their own. Before they do so, they agree to exchange cell numbers, and it is at this point that they realize that none of them has a cell connection. The act of exchanging phone numbers, accordingly, has no practical consequence, since the passengers cannot use the numbers anyway, though it does symbolize their basic commitment to remaining connected to each other even after they separate—a commitment that will gradually strengthen over the course of the film. This protean process of community formation is interspersed, however, with a series of incidents wherein various individuals leave or are expelled from the main group. To begin with, even before the bus leaves Mong Kok, a young man and woman board the vehicle but then immediately get off again. Mere minutes later, the bus passes a gruesome car accident on the side of the road and—although the bus passengers do not make the connection until much later—it turns out that the two corpses they glimpse as they pass the crash scene are in fact those of that couple. This, it turns out, is the earliest hint in the film that the space of the minibus—together with the community it comes to represent—somehow affords its members a sort of protective power. Ironically, though, the protection that is granted to those members within the community is dialectically paired with an increased risk for those individuals at the margins or outside of the community, while the group’s perception of the doomed fate of the others who have been either excluded or removed from the group can help bring the remaining members of the group even closer together. Not long after the bus exits the Lion Rock Tunnel, four college students get off at a university bus stop,2 and one of them collapses almost immediately and has to be virtually carried back to his dormitory by the others. In the dormitory, the student begins running a high fever, and, as his friends are outside looking for help, he literally burns up, and his body is reduced to a smoking husk. Meanwhile, after the remaining passengers leave the bus and fan out through the city, the de facto protagonist of the film, a young man named Yau Tsi-chi (played by Wong You-nam), decides to bike over to his girlfriend’s apartment, but on his way he encounters the remaining three university students frantically running down the street. Tsi-chi manages to avoid the students, whereupon two of them collapse in the middle of the street and their bodies crumble to dust. The third student continues running for a few more seconds before he, too, 2. The university featured in the film is actually the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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collapses, his face swelling up in a grotesque manner before exploding, though just before he dies he plaintively asks why Tsi-chi wasn’t willing to help him. Each of these four students undergoes a dramatic physical transformation immediately before dying, which has the effect of figuratively stripping them of their humanity even before they are fully dead, and this final scene of the last student being ignored by Tsi-chi even as he pleads for help underscores that the community may play an active role in play in reinforcing this dehumanization process by withholding its recognition of these same marginal figures. A similar process of exclusion is repeated several times throughout the film, wherein someone becomes radically dehumanized upon being separated from the main group, even as this process of dehumanization unexpectedly functions to reinforce the communal bonds holding the group together. For example, the surviving passengers eventually congregate in an empty restaurant, where they discuss how to proceed. While the group is in the restaurant, however, the body of one of the men begins to break apart and crumble to dust, like the college students earlier, and he rushes out of the building and collapses into a large water-filled aquarium by the door, where he dies. Soon after, the body of a second man suddenly bursts into flames, whereupon he too dashes out of the building, collapses against a small tree on the side of the road, and within seconds is completely incinerated. The other passengers watch this development in horror, though their shock at seeing one of their own die in a spectacular fashion ironically seems to bring them even closer to one another, as they attempt to comfort each other in order to deal with the trauma. While the conflagration sequence is unfolding, meanwhile, the bus driver—who had left the restaurant to try repair his vehicle—is driving back to the restaurant and notices that the cocaine addict has reboarded the bus without the driver’s knowledge. The addict attacks the driver with a kitchen cleaver, but the driver wrests the blade away and buries it in the addict’s shoulder, then kicks him off the bus and leaves him to die on the side of the road. Covered in blood, the driver returns to the restaurant, where he learns that one of the female passengers has been assaulted by two of the young men—one of whom raped and killed her and then proceeded to sexually abuse her corpse. The other passengers are scandalized by this revelation, and after some discussion one of them suggests that they each take turns stabbing the rapist to death.3 The resulting controversy over whether to execute the young man centers on the group’s insistence that he must be “punished by law,” to which the young man himself retorts, “What law are you talking about? We’re at the end of the world.” Another passenger agrees, pointing out that when the minibus passed through the tunnel, “our city changed irrevocably, and now society’s laws, human ethics—they no longer apply,” though someone else responds that “if we’re the last people in the world, then ‘society’ is us, right here.” Eventually, each of the passengers takes turns stabbing the young man with a kitchen knife until he dies. The systematic and even ritualistic process by which they kill the young man helps to displace responsibility for the execution from the individual passengers and onto the collective, even as it constitutes an example of the group implementing a rule-based procedure that may then form the basis for a new “society.”
3. One of the women in the group suggests that the women vote on whether to execute the man, and all three of them vote to do so.
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What we observe in this scene, accordingly, is the beginning of process of reconstituting a social order (albeit in a highly perverse form) out of chaotic fragmentation. One subtext of this latter sequence is the passengers’ suspicion that the rape/murder victim, and possibly others, may have been infected by a deadly virus, and throughout the film this virus is alternately characterized as a zombie virus (a familiar staple in the horror genre with which the film is in dialogue) or SARS (which had virtually emptied out Hong Kong’s streets and other public spaces a decade earlier). However, the film never offers a specific etiology of the virus, and furthermore most of the film’s characters die in a radically different manner. As a result, the repeated allusion to viruses seems to reflect not so much a concrete medical concern but rather a more abstract interest in the invisible bonds that may link otherwise unrelated individuals together. In this context, the figure of the virus carries two seemingly antithetical sets of connotations: on one hand, a virus is a pathogen that may cause disease, death, and social devastation, but, on the other hand, the pattern of infection generated by a virus brings into relief a set of underlying patterns of social contacts and interactions that, collectively, make us human.4 It gradually becomes apparent that the minibus’s passengers are not in fact the only people left alive in Hong Kong, and instead the space of the metropolis is also occupied by a group of soldiers wearing gas masks and other protective gear roaming the city streets. These soldiers initially flicker in and out of sight, like the flashbacks that punctuate the film, such that the bus passengers (and the film’s viewers) initially suspect that they could be merely optical illusions—similar perhaps to the film’s frequent flashbacks to periods before the crisis. In any event, the sight of armed soldiers and armored vehicles in Hong Kong’s city streets is a powerful one, and for many viewers it may serve as a reminder of the ever-present possibility of either a foreign occupation or an internal declaration of martial law. In particular, the scene may invoke memories of the three years of Japanese occupation of Hong Kong that began in 1941 or, more recently, of the military crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy protesters in June 1989, just eight years before the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control (the Tiananmen protests and subsequent crackdown were observed closely in Hong Kong, and in May 1989 1.5 million Hong Kongers demonstrated in the streets in support of the Tiananmen protesters, making this the largest mass demonstration in the city’s history). In either instance, the armed troops represent the antithesis of the ideal of political sovereignty that has been the emphasis of recent Hong Kong democracy demonstrations such as the Umbrella Movement. As the film progresses, these mysterious soldiers become increasingly visible, and, when the passengers eventually succeed in catching one of them, they remove his gas mask and find that he is actually a Japanese man with a shaved head. Using a Google translation app on their cell phones to communicate with the man, they discover that he is claiming that he is actually on their side and is trying to help them. As they are talking, the man suddenly springs to his feet and races away, and in the process shouts something in Japanese, which the passengers’ cell phone translates as, “I will save you all, I will save you all. Fu ku . . .” The cell phone only captures a fragment of his final 4. For more on these paradoxical connotations of the figure of the virus, see Carlos Rojas, Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Reform in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
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word, “Fu . . . ku . . .”, but the passengers are unable to make out the rest. Near the end of the film, however, it finally occurs to them that what the Japanese man had been trying to say was probably “Fukushima”—referring to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster of 2011, suggesting that Hong Kong may have been subjected to a forced evacuation and military occupation following a similar nuclear emergency. Despite offering a wide variety of potential explanations for the crisis afflicting the city, Chan’s film does not give viewers any reliable way of choosing among these various explanations. In fact, in addition to the possibility of a viral epidemic or a nuclear catastrophe, the film even suggests that the lyrics to David Bowie’s song “A Space Oddity” (which appear repeatedly throughout the work) are some sort of coded message from another dimension. As a result of this indeterminacy, the crisis appears overdetermined, and the film’s focus is shifted from the precise cause of the crisis to its underlying logic. The same process of expulsion and fragmentation that is the most tangible symptom of the crisis that engulfs the society in the film, in other words, is simultaneously a key element on which social cohesion is itself often predicated. These expelled figures may be viewed as an example of what Giorgio Agamben calls bare life or homo sacer—borrowing a Latin term for a figure who, in Roman law, has been expelled from the community and may be killed by anyone. Agamben argues that, in many traditional as well as modern societies, a similar process of strategic exclusion of some marginalized individual may help symbolically reinforce the perceived legitimacy of the community itself.5 In a more explicitly modern context, meanwhile, Achille Mbembe speaks of a regime of necropolitics, which he identifies as the obverse of Foucauldian biopolitics and specifically refers to the ability of the state not only to nurture life but also to withhold that same nurturing support. In other words, the state, together with the institutional networks with which it is allied, has the “power and capacity to determine who will live and who will die.”6 Like Agamben, Mbembe emphasizes that this process of violent exclusion is not simply the obverse of a vision of a healthy, nurturing community, but furthermore the necessary possibility of these necropolitical processes of exclusion symbolically reinforces the biopolitical regime’s authority and legitimacy. In Fruit Chan’s film, we observe a similar process wherein the various individuals who are separated from the core group and suffer violent deaths symbolically reinforce emerging community’s sense of cohesion, even as the core group itself may be viewed as a figurative homo sacer in its own right, mysteriously cast out of the structured society of contemporary Hong Kong. A similar dialectics of fragmentation and reconstitution may be observed in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement. To the extent that the virtual community that is produced by the Umbrella Movement is “imagined,” the community is predicated on the existence of a set of structural gaps between the thousands of individual participants, most of whom do not know each other personally. Similarly, the focus on abject bodies in The Midnight After is mirrored in the Umbrella Movement’s emphasis on order and hygiene. Like Taiwan’s Sunflower Student Movement earlier that same year—which involved a student occupation of the Legislative Yuan from March to April of 20147 and 5. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 6. Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 11–40. 7. Coincidentally, Taiwan’s sunflower movement encampments were disbanded on the same day of the Hong Kong theatrical debut of The Morning After.
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which prided itself on its attention to cleanliness—Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement demonstrations were distinguished by the highly sophisticated internal organization that was developed to handle issues of sanitation, trash disposal, and even recycling. Finally, even as the Umbrella Movement was explicitly concerned with questions of suffrage and democracy, the protests themselves were positioned outside of the formal electoral system—meaning that they relied on an extrademocratic process in order to try to secure a guarantee within the electoral system itself. The community of protesters that developed during the 2014 Umbrella Movement may be viewed as a kind of a communitas—a Latin term for an unstructured community grounded on principles of equality. The anthropologist Victor Turner argues more specifically that a communitas is an unstructured state that may emerge at a point of transition between one structured state and another.8 For Turner, accordingly, a communitas represents a liminal state within which an egalitarian community may reassess and even reinvent existing social structures. Significantly, however, existing social structures must be bracketed for the communitas to emerge—as they are in the Umbrella Movement or, even more dramatically, in the fictional space of The Midnight After.
Iteration The power of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests was grounded in its deployment of a set of imaginary ties along both a horizontal and a vertical axis—which is to say, the movement was able to bring together not only a wide array of different individuals and groups working together in the present but also a diverse group of historical antecedents with differing implications. For instance, the demonstrations resonated with a number of other recent proreform efforts such as the Jasmine Revolution and the global Occupy Movement. The Jasmine Revolution began in Tunisia in late 2010, focusing on democratic reform, and quickly grew to include not only a wide array of protest movements throughout the Middle East, known collectively as the Arab Spring, but also a series of prodemocracy protests in more than a dozen cities throughout mainland China beginning in early 2011. The global Occupy Movement, meanwhile, began with the Occupy Wall Street movement in September 2011, focusing on economic inequality. The movement quickly inspired parallel encampments in numerous cities around the world, including Hong Kong itself, where the encampment lasted nearly a year and became one of the movement’s longest continually occupied encampments. Closer to home, the 2014 demonstrations were preceded not only by the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement that dated back to January 2013 but also by the similarly named Occupy Central encampments that began in Hong Kong’s Central District in October 2011. Part of the global Occupy Movement, Hong Kong’s Occupy Central encampments remained in place until October 2012. The Umbrella Movement demonstrations also tapped into the broader array of earlier local protest traditions that include Hong Kong’s annual June 4 vigils, which have held annually since 1990 to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and the July 1 marches that have been held annually since the 1997 handover, though attendance spiked dramatically in 2003 when the demonstrations were linked to a more specific opposition to the 8. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2008).
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government’s attempts to pass Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23—which would have granted the government extraordinary extrajudicial powers to fight what were deemed to be subversive threats. The power of the Umbrella Movement, accordingly, lay in its ability to bring together not only vast numbers of Hong Kongers but also a wide array of historical antecedents that resonate productively with one another. These earlier protests have established a public vocabulary of protest and activism from which subsequent interventions may draw, even as they simultaneously extend these protests in new directions. Underlying the focus in The Midnight After on a set of social bonds linking the characters in the film to one another is a parallel focus on issues of temporal bonds, specifically the ways in which the present continues to be shaped by a traumatic legacy of the past. Scenes of the bus passengers attempting to come to terms with their current situation are repeatedly interspersed with flashbacks to their lives before the crisis, with the suggestion that these memories are helping shape the passengers’ decisions of how to proceed. The result is a palimpsestic structure wherein the past is not only overlaid onto the present but also helps inform how the present comes to imagine its own future. This parallel between horizontal and vertical bonds is perhaps most clear in the work’s treatment of the relationship between Yau Tsi-chi and his girlfriend Ah Yi. Throughout much of the initial portion of The Midnight After, Tsi-chi repeatedly attempts to call Ah Yi on his cell phone but finds it impossible to get through to her. Eventually he decides to go to her apartment but finds everything covered in a thick layer of dust, as though the apartment has been vacant for a very long time. While he is there, Tsi-chi has a flashback of Ah Yi calling him on the phone from this same apartment, and later in the film this scene is played out in reverse when he returns again to the apartment, where the phone starts ringing and it turns out that Ah Yi is on the other line. Her voice soft and indistinct, as though she were speaking to him from a vast distance, and she tearfully tells Tsi-chi that his mother has died of heartbreak, adding that six years have already passed since he disappeared. For Tsi-chi, however, it seems as though only a few hours have elapsed since he last saw Ah Yi and his family. This discussion between Tsi-chi and Ah Yi suggests that it is not the rest of the city’s inhabitants who have disappeared but rather the minibus passengers who have somehow slipped into a temporal cul-de-sac outside of the historical time of the rest of the city. To Ah Yi, accordingly, it appears that Tsi-chi has mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth, and when he finally manages to speak to her on the phone, Ah Yi responds as though he were a ghost returning from the dead. The irony here is that even as Ah Yi is presented as a spectral reminder of the life Tsi-chi once had, we simultaneously see Tsi-chi himself being figured as a ghostly presence haunting Ah Yi’s own world, which has continued uninterrupted following his disappearance. Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After similarly builds on a series of earlier precedents that collectively contribute to the contemporary work’s significance. Most immediately, the film was based on a debut novel published by a twentysomething author writing under the pseudonym “Mr. Pizza.” The novel was distributed over the internet in short installments during the first half of 2012 and was subsequently published in two volumes in July 2012 and January 2013, respectively.9 The serialized version of the novel was quite 9. The novel has the same Chinese title as Fruit Chan’s subsequent film, though the English title of the printed volume is Lost on a Red Mini Bus to Taipo. For the printed version of the novel, see Pizza, Naye
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popular, as readers accessed it not only on its original website (HKGolden.com) but also on a set of parallel sites such as the novel’s Facebook page, and they were able to comment on the narrative as it was unfolding, thereby generating a set of virtual communities between otherwise unrelated individuals. Moreover, because the entire novel is written in colloquial Cantonese and uses many Chinese characters that are not found in standard Mandarin, the readerly communities that developed around the text were presumably also predominantly represented by Cantonese speakers. Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After is in dialogue not only with Pizza’s 2012 internet novel but also with a set of thematic concerns that Chan has been exploring throughout his cinematic career. In particular, from near the beginning of Chan’s career, the film The Longest Summer (去年煙花特別多, 1998; the Chinese title could be translated as “Last year, there were a lot of fireworks”) opens with newsreel footage of the final changing of the British guard on the morning of July 1, 1997, marking the formal end of British rule in Hong Kong. This is immediately followed by an enigmatic sequence featuring a boy in a Hong Kong subway. The boy initially appears in a series of close-ups, until eventually it is revealed that he has a fist-sized hole extending from one cheek straight through to the other. After this initial appearance, the faceless boy disappears from the main body of the film, which instead follows the lives of two brothers during the summer of 1997. The elder brother, Ga Yin, works for the British military while his rebellious younger brother, Ga Suen, works for the Hong Kong Triads. Since Ga Yin’s employment with the British will end after the handover, Ga Suen convinces his elder brother to join him in working for the Triads, and the majority of the film revolves around a foiled bank robbery that the Triads attempt to carry out. The boy from the subway, meanwhile, does not reappear until near the end of the film, in a sequence that begins with Ga Yin entering a restaurant. Soon after Ga Yin starts eating, however, a large group of boys join him at the table, at which point the boy from the subway walks over to Ga Yin and inspects a long knife the older man has in his bag, then pulls out an even longer knife of his own. Suddenly, all the other boys in the restaurant begin fighting one another, and after a brief pause Ga Yin grabs his own knives and attacks the boy from the subway, then chases him out of the restaurant and into an empty alley. He stands over the boy and shoots him repeatedly in the arms and legs, then holds the gun up to the boy’s cheek and shoots him right through the face, splattering the boy’s blood all over the wall behind him. The exaggerated, dreamlike nature of this sequence suggests that it functions not as a strictly realistic representation but rather as an allegorical commentary on the film’s underlying concerns. Part of this allegorical significance is reflected in the public service poster on the wall behind the boy, which draws attention to Hong Kong’s crisis of homeless street children. When the boy from the subway is shot in the face, his blood splatters all over the poster, implying that he is a symbolic embodiment of this epidemic of abandoned and anonymous children. At the same time, there is also a suggestion that he carries a more specific significance within the film itself. As Ga Yin stands over the boy while shooting him, he asks repeatedly, “Do you want me to join the Triads? Do you want me to rob a bank?”—suggesting that he sees the boy as a younger version of lingchen, wo zuoshang le Wang Jiao kai wang dapu de hong van 那夜凌晨,我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅VAN [Lost on a red mini bus to Taipo] (Hong Kong: Sun Effort, 2012), 2 vols. Fruit Chan’s film is based on roughly the first half of the novel, and a sequel to the film is apparently in the works. My focus in this chapter, however, is on the film itself.
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his own younger brother, Ga Suen.10 By transposing his vision of his brother onto this much younger boy and then viciously assaulting him, moreover, Ga Yin is figuratively attacking a displaced version of himself, specifically his frustrations after having lost his official job following the handover. Similar issues of temporal displacement are also raised in Chan’s directorial debut, Finale in Blood (大鬧廣昌隆, 1993; the Chinese title could be translated as “Havoc in Kwong Cheong Lung”).11 Filmed in 1991 but not released until 1993, Finale in Blood is based on a Guangzhou folktale that has been repeatedly adapted for both the stage and the screen, featuring a woman, Fong Yan (played by Tiu Gwan-mei), who was murdered by her husband in the 1920s. Two decades later, a Hong Kong radio broadcaster discovers Fong Yan’s ghost inside an old umbrella, and he releases her from the umbrella and then takes an interest in her story. He even invites her to speak on his radio show, using his own body as a medium, and the resulting show is an instant hit, offering the host’s radio audience a compelling locus of imaginary identification. In commercial terms, Chan’s adaption of the Kwong Cheong Lung story was a failure, and it would be another four years before he would have a chance to direct another feature film. As it turns out, his next film was Made in Hong Kong (香港製造, 1997), which was billed as “the first post-1997 independent film from the now historical colony” and was a critical success, winning awards for both Best Picture and Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Coincidentally, the first major adaptation of the Kwong Cheong Lung story following Chan’s Finale in Blood was also released in 1997, in the form of a twenty-episode Hong Kong miniseries broadcast between August 4 and August 29, 1997. The latter adaptation was a surprise hit, and it ended up being Hong Kong’s most popular television series of the year. Released almost simultaneously in the months immediately following the 1997 handover, accordingly, Made in Hong Kong and the Kwong Cheong Lung miniseries may be seen as figurative sequels to Chan’s 1993 film Finale in Blood, and they both transpose the earlier film’s thematization with spectral returns onto a contemporary set of concerns with Hong Kong’s posthandover future and its resilient bonds with its own colonial past. Like many other adaptations of the Kwong Cheong Lung narrative, Chan’s 1993 film and the 1997 miniseries both revolve around a haunted umbrella that provides the vehicle by which soul of the murdered wife can move between past and present. Given the importance of umbrellas in these various adaptations of the Kwong Cheong Lung narrative, it is useful to reassess the significance of the symbol of the umbrella in relation to Hong Kong’s 2014 prodemocracy protests. Although in English the term “umbrella” may be used metaphorically to describe a broad category that incorporates different elements (such as the movement’s ability to bring together different political constituencies), Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement actually got its name from a more literal meaning of the term, in that the protestors frequently used actual umbrellas to protect themselves from police tear gas and pepper spray. As a result, the umbrella became a powerful symbol of the movement’s emphasis on peaceful protest while at the same time underscoring the aggressive response being used against it. A widely circulated photograph of a protester helpfully holding up an umbrella to shield a police 10. In this context, it is worth noting that the actor who plays the part of Ga Suen also appears in the preceding restaurant scene, disguised as a younger boy. 11. Kwong Cheong Lung is the name of a warehouse, which was named after the three brothers who initially owned it.
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officer during a rainstorm dramatically illustrates this symbolic significance of the umbrella—wherein the protester not only responds to the threat of force with a gesture of kindness but also, in so doing, implicitly creates a sense of obligation, a symbolic debt that should be repaid. While Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After does not feature any actual umbrellas, the work does culminate in a climactic sequence featuring a torrential downpour, in which the surviving minibus passengers appear wearing an elaborate array of gear to protect them from the environment. The sequence begins with passengers having decided to proceed to Tai Mo Shan, the highest peak in Hong Kong’s New Territories, where there is a radio tower they believe may contain clues as to what has happened to them.12 Before departing, the passengers stop by a store and outfit themselves with full-body surgical smocks, respirators, goggles, gloves, and surgical caps. On the way to Tai Mo Shan, however, the companion of the young man who had raped and killed the female passenger suddenly confesses that, after her death, he had found some public flyers offering a reward for the woman’s capture and return (she was wanted because she owed debts) and had proceeded to rip them all down, presumably in order to claim the reward himself. The other passengers are scandalized by this revelation and proceed to kick him off the bus, after which red rain begins falling from the sky. As the bus drives away, meanwhile, it is promptly halted by the same drug addict whom the bus driver had left for dead. The addict is now standing in the middle of the road, the cleaver still buried in his shoulder and his body covered in blood. He boards the bus, and one of the passengers asks him whether he wants help removing the cleaver from his shoulder, to which he replies that the cleaver is keeping the wound closed and if he were to remove it, he would cover the bus in blood—an ironic remark, given that at this point the bus is being drenched in blood-like rain. The addict then asks where the bus is headed, and, when the other passengers reply that they are taking Lam Kam Road to Tai Mo Shan, the addict suggests that they instead take a route leading back through Kowloon. The other passengers readily agree, and the bus sets off. In concluding with the bus heading back to Kowloon, where it began its journey the night before, the film underscores a process of re-engaging with the past. This act of returning to a point of origin mirrors the passengers’ willingness to have the wounded addict rejoin them—this being the first time in the film that a symbolically excluded figure (a homo sacer) is not sacrificed but instead is readmitted into the core community itself. Moreover, just as the minibus passengers are agreeing to let the wounded addict onto the bus and back into their community, several of them begin removing their face masks and goggles—implicitly accepting the abject environment around them rather than attempting to protect themselves from it. Soon, the rain stops and the minibus drives off into the sunset. Italian theorist Roberto Esposito has recently expanded on the notion of communitas, observing that, etymologically, it is grounded on a shared sense of obligation or debt (munos). Accordingly, a communitas, for Esposito, is defined by a combined sense of lack and of obligation, and it is dialectically opposed to the concept of immunity (or immunitas) that, in political terms, marks an individual’s lack of obligation—which is to 12. The novel version of the work explains that Tsi-chi has learned from his girlfriend Ah Yi that his telephone calls to her have been originating from a radio tower on Tai Mo Shan, and therefore he and the other minibus passengers decide that if they can reach this tower, they might then be able to figure out what has happened to them.
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say, a lack of obligation–cum-lack.13 In The Midnight After, we observe the protean community of the minibus passengers gradually coalesce around a sense of mutual indebtedness and obligation. Importantly, however, this sense of indebtedness also extends to those homines sacri who have been figuratively sacrificed (and seemingly forgotten) in the course of the community’s process of self-constitution. The return of the wounded addict, accordingly, symbolizes a return of the repressed, together with the passengers’ implicit recognition of the need to acknowledge their indebtedness both to the past and to a set of excluded figures on which the community’s “imagined” cohesion is structurally predicated.
Heterotopias The final shot of The Midnight After is a bird’s-eye view of Hong Kong. For a few seconds the city’s streets appear filled with cars and buses, but then the vehicles disappear, leaving the city as vacant as it had been in the main body of the film. Meanwhile, a caption appears onscreen that reads, “Following this city’s deep slumber, will we have forgotten our former resplendent past? I don’t even know what evening this evening is” (隨著這座城市暗光沉睡之時,我們有否已淡忘了曾經光輝的過去,不知今夕何夕). As the camera continues to pull back, the scene gradually fades to black. The locus classicus for the final phrase of the caption, “what evening is this evening” (jinxi hexi 今夕何夕), is a poem in the Book of Odes (詩經), though the phrase is more commonly associated with the Southern Song poet Zhang Xiaoxiang’s 張孝 祥 ci lyric poem “On Cruising the Dongting Lake” (念奴嬌, 過洞庭). Zhang’s poem, which is written in the voice of a literatus on a boat, repeatedly alludes to the soft light that the moon casts on the water’s surface and concludes with a citation of the same phrase that appears at the end of Fruit Chan’s film: “I don’t know what evening this evening is” (buzhi jinxi hexi 不知今夕何夕). While the word jinxi (今夕) literally means “this evening,” the character 夕 (xi) is actually derived from the character for “moon” 月 (yue),14 suggesting not a temporal but rather a spatial designation. Read etymologically, the phrase suggests a sense not only of temporal dislocation (“I don’t know what evening this evening is”) but also of territorial dislocation (“I don’t know which moon this moon is”). In this way, the phrase suggests a space of alterity that illuminates the present by its reflection but that is nevertheless radically distanced from it. This allusion to the moon as a figure of temporal and spatial alterity is an example of what Foucault calls a heterotopia or countersite, which he describes as “a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”15 Seen in these terms, Fruit Chan’s The Midnight After—together with the Umbrella Movement protests that it parallels—may be viewed as a kind of heterotopia through which the dialectics of utopia and dystopia, of reality and possibility, may be productively re-examined. 13. Roberto Esposito, Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, trans. Timothy Campbell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). 14. The entry for “xi” (夕) in the early etymological dictionary Shuowen jiezi (說文解字) explains that it means “a moon half-seen” (從月半見)—which refers both to the physical moon (which may be only partially visible at dusk) as well as to the character for “moon,” 月 (yue), from which the character 夕 appears to be derived. 15. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22–26.
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Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006. Esposito, Roberto. Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community. Translated by Timothy Campbell. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 22–26. Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Translated by Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40. Pizza. Naye lingchen, wo zuoshang le Wang Jiao kai wang dapu de hong van 那夜凌晨,我坐上了旺角開 往大埔的紅VAN [Lost on a red minibus to Taipo]. 2 vols. Hong Kong: Sun Effort, 2012. Rojas, Carlos. Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Reform in Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 2008.
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Legalistic and Utopian Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement
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Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement famously drew its name from the improvised use of umbrellas as shields against police tear gas, fired in an attempt to clear the first group of protesters on September 28, 2014. The humble but handy umbrella became a symbol of resistance by ordinary people, using everyday tools, against an unaccountable government. The movement shared some characteristics with other recent mobilizations: it has been widely compared to the 1989 occupation of Tiananmen Square, Occupy Wall Street, and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement of spring 2014—but, as its participants point out, the twelve-week Umbrella Movement outlasted them all. In fact, the similarities to Tiananmen—also initiated by Chinese student groups calling for more democracy—were superficial. The Umbrella Movement had a set of precisely formulated technical demands; it did not target the Central People’s Government or engage in rhetoric about the future of the nation. The freer environment of Hong Kong offered the protesters a degree of media and institutional support unavailable (except arguably very briefly) to the Tiananmen students, while also putting constraints on the authorities’ response. And, of course, the Umbrella Movement relied on social media and virtual networks unavailable in 1989. Comparisons with the 2011 Occupy Movement in the United States can point to a similar repertoire of actions, not least protest art and education; the libraries set up by Umbrella protesters in Admiralty and Mongkok recall the People’s Library in Zuccotti Park. But the Hong Kong demands were unequivocally concerned with formal democracy and the rule of law, rather than global capitalism and the financial crisis. The spring 2014 Sunflower Movement in Taiwan—students and others occupying the Legislative Yuan from March 18 to April 10 to protest the fast tracking through parliament of a service agreement between Taiwan and China—offers a closer analogy. Both occupations combined legalistic demands about procedure with deeper claims about identity and political representation, amid perceptions that the Beijing government was working hand-in-glove with local economic elites to thwart democratic outcomes; both resorted to novel forms of activism and cultural interventions. Yet the Umbrella Movement remains distinctive, in part because of Hong Kong’s unique status
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as a relatively free enclave within the People’s Republic of China, under the Basic Law. How then should it be situated among the new protest movements?
Catalysts The Umbrella Movement occurred in the course of a consultation process on constitutional reform to implement full universal suffrage, as promised by Hong Kong’s Basic Law, adopted in 1990. In 1997, when Hong Kong become a special administrative region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, its Basic Law stuck to the spirit of the colonial institutions: the former office of governor was replaced by a “chief executive,” while the territory’s Legislative Council (LegCo) retained its balance between seats elected in geographical constituencies and those representing functional constituencies (mainly business interests but some, like the education or medical sector, are also elected). However, the first-past-the-post system, which favored the democrats (who held a 60 percent majority in most districts and could have swept elected seats), was replaced with a fully proportional system, which gave the pan-democrats and the proestablishment parties a similar number of elected seats. Nevertheless, the Basic Law—drafted in the 1980s by PRC officials and representatives of the Hong Kong business elite—affirmed that “the ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage, upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures” (Article 45). Similarly, the goal was direct election to all LegCo seats, though the Basic Law stipulated that neither would happen before 2007–2008. In the meantime, the chief executive would be chosen by an 800- or 1,200-strong Election Committee. The partial democratization of the LegCo, which was achieved in the very last years of colonial rule (after the Basic Law had been promulgated), continued to progress in the years after the handover but was frozen after 2004. After mass demonstrations against introducing national security legislation to Hong Kong in 2003 (as foreseen in Article 23 of the Basic Law), the Central Government also tightened control over the procedure to revise the Basic Law. However, in 2007 the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress ruled that universal suffrage would be introduced for the 2017 election of the chief executive, by amending Annex 1 of the Basic Law, though the details were left vague. After a 2010 compromise over LegCo reform, in which the Democratic Party negotiated directly with Beijing’s representatives in Hong Kong, the Central Liaison Office, splitting the pan-democrat camp, many supporters of democracy became discouraged at their lack of bargaining power. After the demonstrations of 2003, and with the growing political activism of Hong Kong’s civil society, marches and protests had come to be seen as routine and ineffectual expressions of discontent. These reasons led Hong Kong University (HKU) law professor Benny Tai to put forward the idea of civil disobedience as a new “lethal weapon” to increase pan-democrats’ bargaining power in the upcoming round of constitutional reforms and to set out eight conditions for Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) to succeed.1 Tai’s ideas met with interest among younger people dissatisfied with the system and frustrated 1. Benny Tai, “Gongmin kangming de zuida shashangli” [The greatest potency of civil disobedience], Hong Kong Economic Journal, January 16, 2013. https://www1.hkej.com/dailynews/article/id/654855/%E5%85% AC%E6%B0%91%E6%8A%97%E5%91%BD%E7%20%9A%84%E6%9C%80%E5%A4%A7%E6%AE%BA %E5%82%B7%E5%8A%9B%E6%AD%A6%E5%99%A8.
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with the routinization of protest politics. Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience began to appear in bookshops around town in 2013. The constitutional process of amending the Basic Law involved the Hong Kong government “consulting” its citizens, from December 2013 to May 2014, with the chief executive, former surveyor C. Y. Leung, then reporting their views to the National People’s Congress (NPC) in July. During the consultation process, a key demand put forward by Hong Kong’s Alliance for True Democracy, including the twenty-seven pan-democratic LegCo members, was for “civil nominations” of chief executive candidates—which, if they had a sufficient number of signatures, would have to be accepted by the Nomination Committee. On August 31, 2014, the NPC Standing Committee pronounced its verdict: universal suffrage would be introduced for the chief executive election in 2017, but candidates would be vetted by a nominating committee formed “in accordance with” the current Election Committee, and each of the two or three candidates selected would need the votes of more than half the committee’s members. The catalyst for the Umbrella Movement was thus first and foremost constitutional and legalistic. OCLP had been widely criticized for its idealism, and the August decision seemed to confirm that the group’s strategy was toothless. However, at this point the course of events completely changed, and, instead of a planned “Occupy” movement, what occurred was a bottom-up, “spontaneous” (zifa) Umbrella Movement. In the aftermath of the NPC ruling, the Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), led by HKU sociology and comparative literature major Alex Chow, and Scholarism, the high school activist group led by seventeen-year-old Joshua Wong, sprang into action. They called for a week of class boycotts from September 22, culminating in a sit-in by high school students outside the LegCo building on Friday, September 26. That night, Wong and a group of fellow students broke into Civic Square, originally a public space in front of LegCo but recently cordoned off. When news spread that some of the students were being detained by the police and their homes searched, more people flocked to join the sit-ins. On Saturday Benny Tai, acknowledging he could not lead the movement, joined the student protesters along with his OCLP colleagues Chan Kin-man, a sociology professor, and Chu Yiu-ming, a Baptist minister—the “Occupy trio”—and their supporters.2 As police tried to move them along, demonstrators spilled onto the streets of the Admiralty District, halting traffic. This in turn triggered police overreaction, with repeated use of tear gas and pepper spray on Sunday, September 28. Protesters armed with umbrellas, goggles, and cling film regrouped as fast as they were dispersed. There was widespread public indignation at the police violence, and tens of thousands, perhaps 100,000 or more, flocked to Admiralty—a whole stretch of the eightlane Harcourt Drive was occupied—and two further protest sites: the Causeway Bay shopping district and Nathan Road in Mongkok, a working-class and commercial area across Victoria Harbour. That night, the High Court ruled that the students detained on September 26 were to be released without charges on a habeas corpus writ.
2. The OCLP Manifesto had previously called for an electoral system complying with international standards, free of any “unreasonable restriction” on the right to stand for election; democratic constitutional reform; and “deliberative democracy”, in which groups of citizens would make informed policy recommendations. See OCLP, “Manifesto,” March 26, 2013, https://oclphkenglish.wordpress.com/about-2/ manifesto/.
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Arc of Protest The movement then unfolded in three acts. The initial stage was dominated by the students’ strategy. On September 28, HKFS published a “Vow of Civil Disobedience” with a rousing call to arms—“Let’s reclaim our Hong Kong! Fight your OWN battle for the place you love, where you belong! Hope rests with the people, change starts with struggle!”—and four demands: the opening of Civic Square, the resignation of the chief executive and his constitutional-reform team, the retraction of the NPC decision, and the adoption of “civil nomination.”3 Leung responded with a recorded video message, saying the students’ demands were unconstitutional and could not be considered. The students set the deadline for talks at midnight on October 2, after which they planned to storm the Chief Executive’s Offices. After last-minute mediation by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and HKU vice chancellors, the government agreed to talks at 11:30 p.m. The next day, Mongkok protesters were attacked by anti-Occupy groups, accompanied by triad members. The police were now accused of inaction. The first week was therefore decisive in several ways. The students did not directly target the Beijing government—on the contrary, they reaffirmed the importance of the Basic Law and “one country, two systems.” Second, despite the absence of any conventional leadership structures, the protest sites were well supplied in water, food, protective equipment, and umbrellas and kept spotlessly clean by an army of volunteers running supply points and recycling garbage. The government, by contrast, seemed unprepared and indecisive, repeating its own slogans, refusing to acknowledge mistakes, and hiding behind operational decisions made by its police force, involuntarily caught up in a political conflict. The public mobilized on a massive scale to defend the rule of law. Beijing responded with rhetorical violence but in the end remained within the constitutional framework of the Basic Law, highlighting the limits within which the Central Government chooses to operate in Hong Kong. The second phase of the movement, which lasted roughly from October 6 to 21, mainly revolved around the student-government dialogue. The Hong Kong government now developed a cogent strategy to deal with the movement, reportedly closely coordinated with Beijing and the Central Liaison Office.4 It was a waiting game, taking minimum action while maximizing inconvenience to ordinary people’s lives—for example, hundreds of schools were closed for a week—while flooding the news with dire warnings about the economic consequences for the city as a whole and “honest ordinary people trying to make a living” who had been “taken hostage by a small minority.” When an Australian newspaper revealed that Leung had received a $7 million fee on the sale in 2011 of the real-estate company DTZ, part of it after taking 3. Hong Kong Federation of Students, “To all Hong Kong Citizens: A Vow of Civil Disobedience,” 28 September 2014. https://www.hkfs.org.hk/to-all-hong-kong-citizens-a-vow-of-civil-disobedience/ 4. The New York Times reported on October 18 that senior Hong Kong leaders reported regularly to a coordination team set up in Bauhinia Villa, a mansion owned by the Central Liaison Office (the central government’s representative) in Shenzhen; Ming Pao reported on November 14 that Zhang Dejiang, the member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee responsible for handling Hong Kong affairs, had traveled several times to a place named Kirin Villa in Shenzhen to meet with leaders from the territory. See Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley, “Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections,” New York Times, October 20, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/world/asia/china-is-directingresponse-to-hong-kong-protests.html; “Beijing xiaoxi: Zhongyang dui qingchang wu shijianbiao” [News from Beijing: Central Government has no timetable for clearance], Ming Pao, 14 November 2014. http:// www.mingpaocanada.com/VAN/htm/News/20141114/HK-gaa2_r.htm.
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office as chief executive, and declared no conflict of interest, the government unilaterally cancelled talks with the students, with no explanation. Speculation that the story had been spread by the central government to get rid of an ineffective chief executive faded when it became clear that Beijing was furious about the leak and was digging in its heels to prevent foreign media from influencing Hong Kong’s politics. Talks resumed only under pressure, after police were caught on video beating up a social worker in a dark corner of the Admiralty site on October 15. The television debate on October 21 was an important achievement for the students—and, in a sense, a high point of the movement. Five representatives of the HKFS, led by Alex Chow and his deputy, Lester Shum, eloquently debated the constitutional details of the NPC decision and the Basic Law framework, putting forward their demands in a calm, rational manner that was highly persuasive for prime-time TV viewers. In her final statement, the Hong Kong government’s chief secretary, Carrie Lam, offered several promises that seemed to bend toward the students’ demands: a second round of consultations, a pledge to set up a consultative platform for post-2017 reforms, and submission of a report on public opinion to the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council in Beijing. The monthly poll published the next day, though carried out earlier, confirmed the students’ popularity: for the first time, supporters of Occupy represented a plurality of popular opinion in Hong Kong, with 38 percent in favor and 35 percent against. In a poll released on November 5, the HKFS was rated the most popular political organization in Hong Kong.5 The third and longest phase of the movement, lasting for almost two months, consisted of a protracted stalemate in which both sides demonstrated their lack of an exit strategy. During this period the huge tent city staged the most creative and utopian aspects of the occupation, with an outpouring of artistic work and new community practices: the eight-lane highway was covered in chalk drawings, yellow ribbons, Post-It note messages, and repurposed umbrellas; street signs were reworked—“Road to Democracy,” “To Central Government and Triad Offices.” During this period the official pan-democrat parties floated the idea of a group resignation of lawmakers, to provoke a quasi-referendum series of by-elections but was shot down because it could offer the government a loophole to push through its proposal. Student groups struggled to come up with a strategy that could increase pressure on the government to return to negotiations without compromising their principle of nonviolence. An uncoordinated attempt by a minority group to break into LegCo on November 19 was followed on November 30 by a last-ditch idea to storm the CE’s office. Finally, several student leaders, including Joshua Wong, staged a hunger strike from December 1, to no avail. The OCLP trio also repeatedly announced its surrender to the police, and carried it out on December 3, without succeeding in convincing the students to retreat from the campsites. The Hong Kong government finally settled on the use of civil court injunctions as a way to end the movement, without itself getting involved. On October 20 injunctions were granted to two plaintiffs in Mongkok, a bus company and a taxi drivers association, 5. See Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, Chinese University of Hong Kong, “Hong Kong Public Opinion & Political Development,” Opinion Survey Second Round Survey Results, October 8–15, 2014, http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/research/1410TaskForce_SurveyResult_141028b_English. pdf; and HKUPOP Rating of Top Ten Political Groups, October 20–23, 2014. http://www.com.cuhk.edu. hk/ccpos/research/1410TaskForce_SurveyResult_141028b_English.pdf.
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to clear parts of Nathan Road, and to the operator of CITIC Tower in Admiralty, to clear exits to the building. Ming Pao later revealed that some of the plaintiffs were connected to Beijing “united front” organizations.6 These injunctions were upheld by the courts, over objections that the same arguments could not apply to private property and to public space. Mongkok was cleared by bailiffs on November 25 and 26 and Admiralty on December 11, although the police, acting at the same time as the bailiffs, cleared the public space beyond the area covered in the injunctions. The Causeway Bay site was cleared on December 15 by the police alone. The students avoided many pitfalls, sticking to nonviolent tactics and maintaining a productively festive atmosphere. They won a prime-time TV discussion, on equal footing with the government, and used it to lay bare the colonial inertia of Hong Kong’s elites, the foundations of Beijing’s parallel administration in Hong Kong, and its use of the Basic Law’s technicalities to cover up hard political realities of the PRC system. They had begun to mobilize an apathetic, conservative society with deep reservations about confrontational social action. However, the leaders lacked an exit strategy and became increasingly isolated from the people in tents, hobnobbing with legislators and radio hosts. The government was successful in waiting out the movement and turning public opinion against it, though the impact on the economy was grossly exaggerated, with all sectors (tourism, retail) reporting strong growth during the fall months. But it has done nothing to address the deeper causes of the movement. Beijing has portrayed it as illegal and manipulated by foreign forces, painting its core demand as Hong Kong independence, the better to unite a social majority against it. But Beijing’s main agenda remains domestic: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was very efficient in nipping in the bud any expression of support for the Umbrella Movement within mainland China by arresting hundreds of ordinary sympathizers and by depicting it as an illegal secessionist group, which has curbed support for it among mainland liberal intellectuals.
Activists and Public Opinion Who were the occupiers and how representative were they of Hong Kong society? The conventional wisdom is that the middle class, in particular the upper-middle class— professionals, lawyers, teachers, professors—are the strongest supporters of democratic reform in Hong Kong. The large working-class population has been basically disenfranchised under both the colonial and postcolonial systems (Chinese became an official language only in 1974). Speaking little English, it maintains close links with extended family members in Guangdong and is easily enrolled in clientelistic networks set up by pro-mainland groups. The super-rich elite, in contrast, having switched its loyalties from one external master to another, strongly supports Beijing and economic integration with the Mainland. What light do sociological surveys conducted during the movement throw on this picture? A study conducted by Edmund Cheng and Samson Yuen during October 20–26 revealed that, while the movement was indeed dominated by young people—85 percent were under forty—students made up only 26 percent of occupiers, against 58 percent 6. “Fan Zhan tuanti gua dangzhengjun jigou zhaopai” [Anti-Occupy groups have party, state or army affiliations], Ming Pao, November 17, 2014, https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%e8%a6%81%e8%81%9e/ article/20141117/s00001/1416160958960.
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who were white-collar workers or self-employed. Some 55 percent held a college or graduate degree, compared to 16 percent among the general population. Many of the occupiers identified themselves as lower-middle class, without opportunities for upward mobility, although only 3 percent (net) cited “obtaining better livelihood” as an important motivation for their participation in the movement, against 87 percent for “obtaining real universal suffrage.”7 Sociologically, they were principally young, highly educated members of the middle class, many young professionals taking part on a rotating basis, with a univocal focus on political, even technical, demands. Observers stressed the differences between the three sites. Causeway Bay was seen as the most “academic,” with a strong presence by scholars and frequent lectures. Admiralty was the most political, dominated by the HKFS and OCLP, its central stage situated under a multicolored canopy of recycled umbrella fabric, where student leaders harangued the crowds and the media every night; in the later stages of the movement the platform was opened to anyone who wanted to speak. Mongkok prided itself on being more “grassroots” and Cantonese speaking, an implicit critique of the middle-class, “reasonable” face displayed to the international press in Admiralty—an indication that there were working-class and older activists who also supported the movement. Mongkok had no central stage, and the hostile and complex environment— triads and minibus companies controlled by them, hostile shop owners, bewildered mainland tourists—led to internal rifts. Conflicts repeatedly broke out between a group of “radical” protesters concentrated around Argyle Street, at the northern end of the occupation zone, and dominated by antimainlander groups Civic Passion and People’s Power, who favored military discipline and opposed concessions to China, and other groups whom they criticized as “leftist pricks” (jo gau). The guru of the nativist faction, Lingnan University lecturer Chin Wan, was outspoken in assailing Admiralty as too legalistic; by contrast he extolled traditional folklore in Mongkok, like the shrine to the Daoist deity Guandi, believed to be helpful in warding off both triads and police. In the south area of the occupation zone, toward Yaumatei, his supporters repeatedly attacked anarchists, who favored unconventional forms of protest like spontaneous “hot pots” or film screenings (Ann Hui’s Ordinary Heroes was shown) and were seen as too liberal and sympathetic to Chinese immigrants.8 The Hong Kong population as a whole remained divided, as shown by a series of monthly polls conducted by CUHK. Of those polled in September, 31 percent supported the Occupy Movement; by the following month this number had risen to 38 percent before dropping to 34 percent in November. Those who did not support the movement numbered 46 percent in September, dropping to 36 percent in October before climbing again to 44 percent in November. The Umbrella Movement did not succeed in convincing the public at large that its methods were appropriate. According to the same CUHK poll, trust in both the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities steadily increased from September to December, especially among “middle voters,” even though 7. See Edmund Cheng and Samson Yuen, “Hou yusan yundong: gaobie zhengzhi lenggan de niandai” [After the Umbrella Movement: Farewell to the age of political indifference], Ming Pao, November 29, 2014, http://news.mingpao.com/pns1411291417197542046. The net percentage represents the difference between those who rate each item as important and those who rate it as unimportant. 8. See a remarkable analysis of the “hotpot incident” on October 9: Holok Chen, “Hotpot, Gods and Leftist Pricks. Political Tensions in the Mong Kok Occupation,” October 15, 2014, https://libcom.org/blog/ mk-hotpot-tensions.
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most respondents were “dissatisfied” with the government handling of protests. More importantly, the movement did not succeed in rallying voters decisively against the NPC framework. Asked whether the legislature should approve or reject a draft based on the NPC decision that would “forbid people having different political views from the Central Government to stand for election,” a majority still believed it should be rejected, but its size fell steadily as the movement continued. In September, 54 percent of those polled stated their preference for the draft’s rejection, with this number dropping to 43 percent by December. Numbers approving the draft also increased, from 29 percent in September to 39 percent in December. While pan-democrats massively rejected it, and proestablishment respondents overwhelmingly approved, by December, among “middle-neutral” voters there was a small majority in favor (50.6 percent vs. 37.9 percent) of the draft.9 These numbers were fluid. A separate Ming Pao poll asked the question, “In the 2017 election for chief executive, if the ultimate political reform proposal from the Central and SAR governments allows one-person, one-vote, but rejects pan-democrats from participation, would you accept the proposal in order to allow one-person one-vote in the election, or oppose the proposal in order to keep status quo in political system?” Here the results went in the opposite direction, with a majority following the prompt in the question to allow one-person, one-vote: 53 percent versus 34 percent in November (almost unchanged from September).10 Whatever the relative weight of these findings, it is clear that the movement was not able to mobilize public opinion decisively in its support beyond partisan lines.
Causes and Characterizations Beyond the immediate triggers of the Umbrella Movement, three sets of underlying causes can be distinguished that may provide some leads to understanding the movement as a whole. They can be broadly separated into the legal-constitutional, the social, and the cultural. On the first, as we have seen, opinion polls and the evolving demands of HKFS and Scholarism show that the movement was grounded in the perception that Hong Kong was being offered “fake” universal suffrage and that promises made in the course of the Sino-British negotiations, enshrined to some extent in the Basic Law, had been broken. This focus was expressed in a series of highly technical legal discussions about the constitutional status of the NPC decision and the Hong Kong government’s options under the Basic Law, which featured prominently in the October 21 television debate. The students had few illusions about how politically unpalatable their demands were for Beijing, but they deployed constitutional arguments very successfully during the program, practicing a kind of legalistic resistance. Since the Hong Kong government and Beijing media comment stressed the “illegal” nature of the sit-ins and the movement in general—and, in particular, the resistance to the court injunctions in the final weeks—the law became a kind of battleground, with each camp trying to enlist the notion of the rule of law to its side. The use of this 9. See Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, “Hong Kong Public Opinion and Political Development,” table 21, http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/ images/news/TaskForce_PressRelease_141218_English.pdf. 10. See HKUPOP, Ming Pao sponsored “Survey on CE Election and Occupy Central Campaign” (Eighth round), November 1, 2014, http://hkupop.hku.hk/english/report/mpCEnOCCw8/index.html.
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rhetoric and of civil injunctions by the government equally highlights that the protesters and Hong Kong’s pan-democrats in general are prone to idealization of the law as a depoliticized tool. For the protesters, the fact that the gradual evolution toward a more democratic system foreseen in the Basic Law has been delayed since the handover created the suspicion that Beijing is prepared to authorize universal suffrage only if its candidates are assured of winning. The vetting procedure is justified by Beijing’s view that its power of appointment of the CE is substantive and that Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy” is not comparable to that of a state in a federal system; however, this argument is undermined by the fact that local leaders are elected regardless of central government approval even in nonfederal systems. The problematic status of the NPC Standing Committee, which serves as a de facto constitutional court for Hong Kong’s common-law system while being the intrinsic emanation of a one-party state, was starkly exposed. The students argued, for example, that in a common-law tradition civil nomination, which was not explicitly excluded under the Basic Law, was permissible, while in the NPC’s view it was incompatible with the Nominating Committee. Beijing meanwhile accused Hong Kongers of “not understanding” the Basic Law, a monistic formulation at odds with the philosophy of common law.11 The students also argued that the legal status of the August 31 decision set out by the NPC was unclear and reflected the NPC’s increasingly proactive involvement in Hong Kong’s constitutional affairs since 2004: it went beyond the question posed by the chief executive to the National People’s Congress but was de facto binding. It thus effectively expanded the NPC’s legislative power through administrative decisions. This approach is rumored to be inspired by Peking University law professor Jiang Shigong, who argues that the chief executive’s accountability to Beijing needs to be strengthened.12 Thus the PRC State Council’s white paper, “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,” published on June 10, 2014, stated that China has “comprehensive jurisdiction” (quanmian guanzhiquan) over Hong Kong, leaving no “residual sovereignty.” It also argued that the Central People’s Government—not the Joint Declaration—is the exclusive source of Hong Kong’s autonomy, implying that the government can modify the Basic Law as it pleases. The white paper thus provided the constitutional and philosophical background to justify the limitation of Hong Kong’s autonomy in the name of national sovereignty.13 It is therefore difficult to see how the Hong Kong system can stabilize in the lead-up to 2047, when the fifty-year commitment to “one country, two systems” made in the 11. The controversy over the Sino-British Joint Declaration is another case in point, with Beijing, echoed by the SAR government, asserting that the principles enshrined in it for fifty years are policies unilaterally adopted by Beijing, conveniently ignoring that, according to Article 7, both sides jointly commit to enforcing all previous articles. See Frank Ching, “Why China is Wrong on the SinoBritish Joint Declaration,” Hong Kong Economic Journal, December 8, 2014. http://www.ejinsight. com/20141208-why-china-is-wrong-on-the-sino-british-joint-declaration/. 12. See “Jiang Shigong: zhuliu zhishijie huile xiayidai” (Jiang Shigong: Mainstream Intellectual Circles Have Destroyed the Next Generation)” Ming Pao, November 19, 2014, http://news.mingpao.com/ pns1411191416333172592. 13. “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,” State Council Information Office, June 2014, http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2014/08/23/ content_281474982986578.htm.
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Joint Declaration expires. The chief executive system has not worked well up to now: if one accepts the chief executive’s twofold accountability, to the Central People’s Government and to the Hong Kong population, only one of these—loyalty to Beijing— has an enforcement mechanism, and thus it tends to override the other. Their accountability to Beijing has succeeded in estranging all three chief executives from their Hong Kong constituency and from the LegCo, which is also ultimately accountable to voters, entailing a state of permanent political paralysis not easily alleviated.
Resistance to the (Post)colonial System Observers could not help but be struck by the challenge the occupation zones represented to Hong Kong’s urban space, structured by multilane highways and anonymous office blocks, with pedestrians confined to overpasses and narrow sidewalks walled off by iron fences. Long dominated by efficiency and economic interests—not to mention worsening air pollution—the urban environment encapsulates the traditional image of Hong Kong as an apolitical society, devoted to making money. During the months of the sit-ins, these barriers were completely removed; occupiers playfully turned highways into gardens and constructed wooden tables and chairs for students to do homework. Air pollution levels fell, and office workers in Admiralty regularly lunched and strolled around the occupied areas. Hong Kong’s traditional image was in large part a legacy of the colonial system. As argued by Lau Siu Kai and Kuan Hsin-chi in The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese, the “economic miracle” was based on keeping the population out of politics, with both colonial and local elites taking advantage of the general disenfranchisement.14 At the same time, as Law Wing-sang has shown, the British government, mobilized against Communism after 1949, fostered a sense of pride in a depoliticized and eternal Chinese culture. While the colonial system was seen by some, or perhaps by many, as discriminatory and corrupt, which led many of today’s pan-democrat luminaries to support “democratic reunification” until 1989, Hong Kongers were never consulted on the handover during the 1980s. Beijing hoped to preserve both these colonial legacies—capitalism and Chinese cultural pride—and to use the latter to integrate Hong Kong into the PRC polity.15 In some respects, Hong Kong continued to be run like a colony after 1997. Despite its anticolonial rhetoric, Beijing developed a typically colonial discourse on Hong Kongers as children who need to be “taught” about the nation in “patriotic education” campaigns. Meanwhile, Beijing continued to rely on the tycoons to govern the territory, carefully cultivating a co-opted elite to whom it offers advantages in mainland China, not least membership in the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The 2003 Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), while presented as a “gift” from Beijing to Hong Kong, accompanied by lessons in patriotism, has helped restructure the Hong Kong economy in the interest of the elites but has provided little trickle-down for ordinary people. This logic was unwittingly illustrated by Leung’s famous statement to the foreign press on October 20, when he 14. Lau Siu Kai, Kuan Hsin-chi, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1988). 15. Law Wing-sang, Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009), 131–76.
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explained that if the words “broadly representative” in the Basic Law were taken to mean “numeric representation,” then “obviously you would be talking about half the people in Hong Kong, who earn less than $1,800 a month. You would end up with that kind of politics.”16 This of course provided ammunition for the students in the subsequent TV debate. The exponential growth of mainland tourism to Hong Kong—a result of the CEPA “individual visit” scheme, which originally seemed a boon—is one of the main causes of friction today. With close to 50 million visitors a year in 2013, compared to 29 million for a city like Paris, Hong Kong’s infrastructure is stretched to breaking point; the downtown areas have been completely restructured to suit the needs of luxury hotels and shops. Overreliance on tourism is reorienting the economy toward a low-end, low-value-added service sector, unsuited to Hong Kong’s highly educated population. Meanwhile Xi Jinping’s report to the Eighteenth Party Congress explicitly emphasized that Hong Kong’s economic path must be in line with the development priorities of the entire nation, problematic for two economies of such different scales and characters. The Umbrella Movement implicitly questioned the precedence of economics over politics and the imperative not to rock the boat—foundational taboos of Hong Kong culture. It exposed many of the deeply ingrained injustices of the polity; for example, the students publicized the fact that the government offices were cleaned by staff on daily contracts, who would not be paid if they could not access the buildings. The press revealed the extortionate terms imposed on minibus drivers—often unqualified workers well beyond retirement age, who have to carry on working because Hong Kong has no real pension system—by companies with triad links (the colonial government had already used minibus drivers as strikebreakers in 1967). The occupiers aimed to link decolonization with repoliticization, questioning the ideology of maximizing profit while leaving politics to a higher authority.
Utopianism Third, and perhaps most important, the Umbrella Movement expressed the identity of an entire generation educated after 1998. All the polls—whether on identity, values, political opinions, or movement strategy—show a deep rift between respondents under thirty and older generations. This division is related to the emergence of a new form of Hong Kong identity over the past decade. The notion first emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s, when growing prosperity and the social policies implemented by the colonial government in the aftermath of the 1967 riots brought larger numbers of Hong Kongers out of their impermanent refugee status and created a form of attachment to the city.17 A generation later, their children would have a much more developed sense of a civic and cultural Hong Kong identity, which achieved full expression in the Umbrella Movement. As Joshua Wong wrote in the New York Times: Our peaceful democracy demonstration has demolished the myth that this is a city of people who care only about money. Earlier generations, many of whom came here from mainland China, wanted one thing: a stable life. A secure job was always more 16. Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley, “Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections,” New York Times, October 20, 2014. 17. See Hung Ho-fung, “Uncertainty in the Enclave,” New Left Review 66, November–December 2010.
Sebastian Veg 207 important than politics. They worked hard and didn’t ask for much more than some comfort and stability. The people of my generation want more. In a world where ideas and ideals flow freely, we want what everybody else in an advanced society seems to have: a say in our future.18
The first indications of this new sense of identity emerged around 2003 with the campaign to save Wedding Card Street in Wanchai from redevelopment (it was demolished in 2007). In the years that followed, similar mobilizations tried to save the old ferry piers in the harbor and villages like Choi Yuen Tsuen—all elements of distinctively local, rather than pan-Chinese, heritage. As Edmund Cheng has noted, the campaigns to save these popular landmarks, which included protracted sit-ins and imaginative forms of action, also inaugurated a new kind of social protest.19 Beijing has relied on Hong Kongers’ traditional identification with Chinese culture to advance the cause of “patriotism,” implicitly defined as loyalty to the central government. Initially these efforts were quite successful: those identifying as “Chinese” rose from 19 percent in 1997 to 39 percent in 2008, during the excitement of the Beijing Olympics. Identification as a “Hong Konger” fell from 43 percent in 1999 to 18 percent in 2008. Since then, however, the trends have reversed. By 2012 only 18 percent called themselves “Chinese” while 42 percent identified as “Hong Kongers”; among underthirties, that figure had risen to over 60 percent.20 The Scholarism-led anti-“national education” movement in 2012 marked a conscious rejection of a state-prescribed form of patriotism; it politicized a whole cohort of high-school students, who formed the backbone of the Umbrella Movement. In April 2014, a poll showed that a broad majority of people (62 percent) wanted “Hong Kong’s identity as pluralistic and international” to be protected and promoted, as opposed to 29 percent for “China’s historical and cultural identity” and a mere 3 percent for “China’s identity as ruled by the CCP.”21 There are several reasons for these shifts. During the colonial era identification with Chinese culture was encouraged as a counterweight; the 1997 handover may have weakened the necessity to identify as Chinese. The central government’s insistent use of patriotism to justify the deferral of democracy may have inclined young citizens to turn against the idea of the Chinese nation even on a cultural level. A similar development took place in Taiwan, which reinvented itself as a distinct nation-state concomitantly with its democracy movement. The twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen movement and the deteriorating human-rights situation in China from 2008 also played important roles. The yearly June Fourth commemoration, originally celebrated in patriotic tones, was massively attended by under-thirties in 2009, which marked its transformation into a local event, characterizing the deferral of democracy in Hong Kong as much as or more than its failure in China. In this sense, the core of Hong Kong’s new identity is a civic, rather than a national, one. 18. Joshua Wong, “Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future,” New York Times, October 29, 2014. http://www. nytimes.com/2014/10/30/opinion/joshua-wong-taking-back-hong-kongs-future.html. 19. Edmund Cheng, “Between Ritualistic Protest and Perpetual Struggle: Transformation of Activism in Postcolonial Hong Kong” (paper presented to the Political Studies Association conference, Manchester, April 14–16, 2014). http://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/conference/papers/2014/Between%20 Ritualistic%20Protest%20and%20Perpetual%20Struggle.pdf 20. “People’s Ethnic Identity,” HKUPOP, 1997–2019, https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ ethnic/index.html. 21. M. De Golyer, Constitutional Reforms: Confrontation Looms as HK Consults; Hong Kong Transition Project Report, April 2014, Table 80.
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The generational shift is also apparent in changing attitudes. In a CUHK poll, the four values Hong Kongers identified with most in 2014 were rule of law (23 percent), freedom (21 percent), fair and clean government (15 percent), and democracy (11 percent). However, under-thirties put freedom first (30 percent), followed by democracy (23 percent), fair and clean government (19 percent), and rule of law (10 percent).22 The difference between an older generation valuing law and order and a younger one more substantively preoccupied with democracy and fairness could not be more apparent. These values were clearly expressed in the Umbrella Movement, together with a distinctly postmodern or postproductivist dimension: students issued critiques of capitalism and productivism, environmental pollution and economic alienation, some of them advocating a return to agriculture and a utopian lifestyle. Such communities have emerged in the aftermath of the anti-high-speed-rail movement to defend Choi Yuen Tsuen village. Similarly, artworks using everyday materials like recycled wood—the famous “umbrella man” statue—are ways to assert the value of individual self-fulfillment. For one weekend in late October, the sit-ins converged with the Gay Pride and LGBT movement. Cosmopolitan, postnational identities that are gaining ground throughout the world chime well with Hong Kong’s hesitant positioning at the border of the PRC. China in a sense embodies all the negative “modernist” values—nationalism, productivism—that postmoderns reject. The “strong-country values” (qiangguo jiazhi) forcefully advanced under Xi Jinping have scant attraction for a postmodern generation searching for individual fulfillment. Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement brought together disparate themes in an original way: it combined Occupy Wall Street’s critique of economic hegemony with a form of legal-constitutionalist resistance against an authoritarian state: a call for democracy with an aspiration to a postmodern, postnational identity, going beyond a politics of recognition. It could be argued that these features mirror China’s own contradictions, as a nominally socialist country practicing unbridled crony capitalism and as a cultural empire dressed up as a jingoistic nation-state. Hong Kong’s simultaneous embrace of democracy and postnational identity and its critique of crony capitalism stand in opposition to China on all counts. A major achievement of the movement is that Hong Kongers have been awakened to the fact that the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration were not designed to give them democracy and that they cannot rely on any outside power to deliver it to them. This is the ultimate meaning of decolonization as self-reliance, which was one of the slogans of the movement: “Save our Hong Kong on our own.” Imperfect as they are, Hong Kong still has some democratic institutions in which the struggle will continue to play out. Can the movement translate its momentum into party politics? The Kuomintang defeat in local elections in Taiwan, seen as a successful transposition of the Sunflower Movement, paved the way to Tsai Ing-wen’s successful presidential bid in 2016. Similarly, the 2016 LegCo elections in Hong Kong saw higher levels of voter participation and several Umbrella Movement activists elected to the LegCo. On the larger Chinese stage, the ideal of the nation, in many ways central to the 1989 movement, is no longer supreme, as multiple Chinese identities take the stage, 22. See “CUHK releases Survey findings on Poll on Hong Kong’s Core Values,” October 30, 2014, https:// www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/press_detail.php?id=1915&t=cuhk-releases-survey-findings-on-views-onhong-kong-s-core-values.
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in accordance with worldwide trends weakening traditional nation-states. It is significant that, while in the 1980s contestation of the Chinese state came from the center, in recent years it has increasingly come from the margins. Despite the strident nationalism that currently dominates the Chinese media, similar evolutions are quietly at work in mainland China itself. Most importantly perhaps, the Umbrella activists reasserted the socially empowering and culturally emancipatory (utopian) dimensions of formal democracy. Despite its narrow constitutional definition, the struggle for greater democracy chimed with anarchist or utopian aspirations for a postproductivist and postnational world order. To an extent, this utopianism needs to be qualified by the movement’s middle-class focus— although some working-class protesters were active in Mongkok. Without doubt, the movement challenged the assertion made in China that liberal democracy is simply one cultural value among others and that it discounts economic and social rights. On the contrary, it articulated the universalist appeal of democratic aspirations based on legalconstitutional demands and their noncontradiction with political, social, and cultural aspirations to emancipation. Whether the utopian spirit of the “Hong Kong Commune” in Admiralty can ultimately challenge the appeal of consumption and offer new forms of radical democracy can, of course, only remain an open question.
Bibliography Bradsher, Keith, and Chris Buckley. “Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections.” New York Times, October 20, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/world/ asia/china-is-directing-response-to-hong-kong-protests.html Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Hong Kong Public Opinion & Political Development.” Opinion Survey Second Round Survey Results, October 8–15, 2014. http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/research/1410TaskForce_ SurveyResult_141028b_English.pdf Chen, Holok, “Hotpot, Gods and Leftist Pricks. Political Tensions in the Mong Kok Occupation.” October 15, 2014. https://libcom.org/blog/mk-hotpot-tensions Cheng, Edmund, and Samson Yuen. “Hou yusan yundong: gaobie zhengzhi lenggan de niandai” [After the Umbrella Movement: Farewell to the age of political indifference], Ming Pao, November 29, 2014. http://news.mingpao.com/pns1411291417197542046 Cheng, Edmund. “Between Ritualistic Protest and Perpetual Struggle: Transformation of Activism in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” Paper presented at the Political Studies Association conference, Manchester, April 14–16, 2014. https://www.psa.ac.uk/sites/default/files/conference/papers/2014/Between%20Ritualistic%20Protest%20and%20Perpetual%20Struggle.pdf Chinese University of Hong Kong. “CUHK Releases Survey Findings on Poll on Hong Kong’s Core Values.” October 30, 2014. https://www.cpr.cuhk.edu.hk/en/press_detail. php?id=1915&t=cuhk-releases-survey-findings-on-views-on-hong-kong-s-core-values Ching, Frank. “Why China Is Wrong on the Sino-British Joint Declaration.” Hong Kong Economic Journal, December 8, 2014. http://www.ejinsight.com/20141208-why-china-is-wrong-on-thesino-british-joint-declaration/ De Golyer, Michael. Constitutional Reforms: Confrontation Looms as HK Consults, Hong Kong Transition Project Report. April 2014, Table 80. http://www.hktp.org/list/constitutional-reform. pdf Hong Kong Federation of Students. “To all Hong Kong Citizens: A Vow of Civil Disobedience.” September 28, 2014. https://www.hkfs.org.hk/to-all-hong-kong-citizens-a-vow-of-civildisobedience/ HKUPOP. “Ming Pao Sponsored Survey on CE Election and Occupy Central Campaign” (Eighth Round). November 1, 2014. http://hkupop.hku.hk/english/report/mpCEnOCCw8/index.html
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———. “People’s Ethnic Identity.” 1997–2019. https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ ethnic/index.html ———. “Rating of Top Ten Political Groups.” October 20–23, 2014. http://hkupop.hku.hk/english/ popexpress/pgrating/datatables/datatable67.html Hung, Ho-fung. “Uncertainty in the Enclave.” New Left Review 66 (November–December 2010). Lau Siu Kai, and Kuan Hsin-chi. The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1988. Law Wing-sang. Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Ming Pao. “Beijing xiaoxi: Zhongyang dui qingchang wu shijianbiao” [News from Beijing: Central Government has no timetable for clearance], November 14, 2014. http://www.mingpaocanada.com/VAN/htm/News/20141114/HK-gaa2_r.htm ———. “Fan Zhan tuanti gua dangzhengjun jigou zhaopai” [Anti-Occupy groups have party, state or army affiliations]. November 17, 2014. https://news.mingpao.com/pns/ %e8%a6%81%e8%81%9e/article/20141117/s00001/1416160958960 ———. “Jiang Shigong: zhuliu zhishijie huile xiayidai” [Jiang Shigong: Mainstream intellectual circles have destroyed the next generation]. November 19, 2014. http://news.mingpao.com/ pns1411191416333172592 OCLP. “Manifesto.” March 26, 2013. https://oclphkenglish.wordpress.com/about-2/manifesto/ State Council Information Office. “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” June 2014. http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_ paper/2014/08/23/content_281474982986578.htm Tai, Benny. “Gongmin kangming de zuida shashangli” [The great potency of civil disobedience]. Hong Kong Economic Journal, January 16, 2013. https://www1.hkej.com/dailynews/article/id/6 54855/%E5%85%AC%E6%B0%91%E6%8A%97%E5%91%BD%E7%20%9A%84%E6%9C%80 %E5%A4%A7%E6%AE%BA%E5%82%B7%E5%8A%9B%E6%AD%A6%E5%99%A8 Wong, Joshua. “Taking Back Hong Kong’s Future.” New York Times, October 29, 2014. http:// www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/opinion/joshua-wong-taking-back-hong-kongs-future.html
Coda
Utopia, Dystopia, and Heterotopia Theoretical Cross-examinations on Ideal, Reality, and Social Innovation
Chan Koonchung
This chapter was first published in a collection pondering social innovation in a nonutopian, nondystopian, and heterotopian world,1 and I do not shy away from controversial ideas. It attempts a reinterpretation of Western theoretical terms in familiar and not-sofamiliar Chinese. In other words, the word is displaced from its existing homestead to the underworld of thoughts. This effort is meant not only for defamiliarization but also for setting meanings and thoughts free from the established distribution of the sensible. Destabilizing the distribution of the sensible and traversing fantasy, in addition to submitting old-fashioned social and political commentaries, could sometimes be very transgressive in the documented histories of China and the world. No rulers welcome commentaries except their own, and, particularly, they do not like those coming from people outside the bounds of the system, outside social code, and outside of social roles. In Plato’s city-state, citizens who do not play their proper roles and, instead, make their voices known—publicly in writing—are punishable by expulsion. In his utopia, everybody assumes a single role—to each his or her own art—and the blame is put on whoever fails to conform to that role. Obviously, who gets to do what for a living is determined by birth or the ruler. To put it in modern terms, a student should become a good student, a laborer should do the job of a laborer, a farmer should work as a farmer, a foreign worker forever a foreign worker; to each his or her own line of work, with no chance of crossing over. In this worldview, every person engages in one craft (one way of making a living, one role, one profession, and one function), as if it were the one way of achieving lasting peace and social order. For readers who are knowledgeable about Chinese history, Plato’s city-state may resemble today’s household registration regime, the agricultural regime in Qin China, or the four castes in Han China. However, avid local activists in Hong Kong might recall how the government has long encouraged 1. Michel Foucault uses the term “heterotopia” in numerous instances to discuss this notion of space. In particular, a lecture note entitled “Des espaces autres” [Of other spaces], published right before his death in 1984. Foucault’s heterotopia refers to a “counter field” of struggle and of counter-hegemonic movement. For more information, one can browse heterotopiastudies.com. I am inspired by a 2011 essay (in Chinese) and a 2013 essay “Utopia, Dystopia, and Heterotopia: a Hong Kong Perspective,” by David Der-wei Wang and borrow their essays’ title for this chapter.
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students to mind their own studies but not to be concerned with public affairs. Other episodes in the city also come to mind: the “functional-group” election committee that chose the first chief executive and the treatment of foreign domestic helpers as exceptional subresidents who are excluded continually from permanent residency. This socalled social order is designed to benefit the ruler or vested interests, simply by virtue of their sheer luck, because we are destined to be governed by this select group of people whose techne is governing. Plato could be said to have prepared an “alibi” for himself. As a self-appointed philosopher, his techne was writing and making commentary about other people and things. He could become the adviser of the polity and lamented that the city-state’s affairs are trampled on by others’ unwise comments. In this Platonic world, the subtle regime of distribution of the sensible to control our imaginary—the division of labor, the narrative delimitation, and the repression of gratuitous social commentary—sets the social stage. Needless to say, bottom-up social action will not be welcome. Furthermore, thinkers such as Jacques Rancière would say that any hierarchical order of government and repression—for Rancière, there is almost no hierarchical order that is not oppressive—is Platonic, since in Rancière’s eyes, Plato is the grand master of retrograde thoughts.2 The distribution of the sensible manifests itself in narrative and experiential delimitation, in bodily domination (the household registration regime, forced migration, etc.), as well as in the surveillance “police” of our privacy (as unveiled by Edward Snowden) in order to maintain a noninclusive hierarchical order. As the new normative governmentality—PAnoptical surveillance, procedural operation, separation of classes, Network management, DAta tracking and mining, BIOpower, POLicing of privacy (referred to as PaNDa-BioPol hereafter)—allows omnipresent and asymmetrical control and discipline; the police-governed ruling order is no longer the exception but the norm. Under this regime of power, the creative collusion between capital and power is fostered, distributive justice is not served, the truth is usurped by national power, and the logic that sustains life on earth is not respected. Secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism, internationalism, and social justice,3 which were sought after by courageous pioneers and social visionaries, still remain the unfinished projects of modernity.4 Good people lack confidence to do good, while evil finds its way to every corner on earth. Even a relatively decent society5 seems to have no future, and it goes without saying that the Anthropocene,6 which human beings have attempted so hard to transform, may not last long.
2. For the notion of “the distribution of the sensible,” see Jacques Rancière’s The Philosopher and His Poor (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983), and The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991) 3. See Etienne Balibar’s On Universalism: A Debate with Alain Badiou (2007). 4. See Jürgen Habermas’s Modernity, an Unfinished Project (1980). 5. The decent society is a model for the good society and was sought by many from Adam Smith to Karl Polanyi. In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls argues that the decent society could be a hierarchical society that affords habeus corpus, but no democracy or freedom. As long as the hierarchy is based on the principle of justice, it will gain legitimacy among the stakeholders. See John Rawls, The Laws of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 6. “Anthropocene” refers to the era when human beings began dominating the Earth’s ecosystem. After life on earth and the natural environment coevolved in the geological eras, the human-centered era began around 2000 BC or even earlier. The advent of the Industrial Revolution only precipitated human’s effects on the ecosystem.
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The issue at hand is therefore not about representing the world; it is about how to change the world.
Are Changes Possible? Perhaps Focauldians may wonder whether I am one of them or whether I am in the anti-Focauldian camp as represented by Jacques Rancière. Neither camp will be entirely satisfied with my vocabulary, evocative of liberalism (indeed, the terms mentioned earlier, namely, secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism, internationalism, and social justice come from Etienne Balibar and have roots in the left wing), or my Habermasian consciousness (questions are reframed as unfinished business, but modernity is not, as some counter-Enlightenment thinkers put it, considered the problem itself. What I want to say is more complicated than “all or nothing” labels. As Marx analyzes the anatomy of capital, I think Foucault’s interrogation of power and affirmation of micro-politics of resistance within the institution are inspirational in today’s PaNDa-BioPol world. We are faced with several forms of “lure”: first, we need to avoid Foucault’s impossibility of emancipation, which may lead to melancholia. Second, we cannot depend on Jean Baudrillard’s illusive simulacra, which frustrate us just as easily. Third, we should stay clear of contemporary fans of Plato, Alain Badiou, and the theoretical virtuoso Slavoj Žižek, who could be said to be chimerical communist theologians refusing to learn the not-so-distant lessons of the gulag. If social movement were a dish, then the following could be the seasonal ingredients. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s multitudes,7 roughly translated into English as “crowds,” could temporarily numb our senses. Jacques Rancière’s abrupt turn, peppered with Žižek’s transgressive “acts” may free our imaginations. Finally, we add Paolo Verni’s European autonomist about-face. With these ingredients, we will be able to mobilize more people to take to the streets, fight, and engage in all forms of disobedience, such as civil disobedience (the fight for constitutionalism), community disobedience (the first form of communitarianism), ethnic disobedience (the second form of communitarianism), professional disobedience (the first form of the politics of common interest), disobedience by those whose interests have been affected (the second form of the politics of common interest), disobedience by trade groups (the first form of class politics), class disobedience (the second form of class politics), disobedience by marginalized or minority groups (the first form of identity politics), generational disobedience (the second form of identity politics), disobedience by multitudes (anarchism), disobedience for social progress (humanitarianism, equal rights, animal rights, environmentalism, internationalism, etc.), disobedience by a cross-section or multitudes (mass movement, united front, popular front). In short, these are disobediences by multiple, but sometimes overlapping, subjectivities. When politics à la Rancière has become an exception, acts of disobedience are typical, or normal acts in a state of urgency, holding the promise to break the rules of the game. Rancière underscores these breakthrough acts of disobedience and calls them genuine “politics” (and everything else, “police”), as they are the shares of the shareless, or in Žižek’s term, they are “events,” whose outcomes are greater than their causes.8 7. See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2005). 8. See Slavoj Žižek’s Event: Philosophy in Transit (New York: Penguin 2014).
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Up to this point, liberal public intellectuals in the Chinese-speaking world (if they have not given up reading this essay) will ask, “Have we done the research on change?” Perhaps Rancière would not be motivated to answer this question, as, for the French thinker, there is only movement besides movement, and he does not trust any accumulative social achievement. Žižek would tease the liberals for asking the question but would not give an affirmative answer, as usual. The multitude and autonomist camp would advocate for collective autonomous organization (an anarchist, informal communism without borders). Nevertheless, will this kind of attitude or answer be approved by the motley multitudes? When you hear the crowds asking, “Do you hear the people sing?” do you conclude that the multitudes have already internalized some concrete values on ultimate choices of what is right and what is wrong for tomorrow? After a century of utopian wet dreams followed by dystopian nightmares, who can prevent the multitudes whose collective memory still lingers from asking the following question: What happens on the day following the revolution? In two interviews that explore the current state and tradition of the Chinese left wing,9 I lamented the fact that Chinese liberals seem not to have read anything outside their own liberal oeuvres. However, I attempt to remind the Chinese New Left that it must not overlook the relatively tangible social-democratic movements existing in China and around the world over the past century.10 I also say that among the group of theorists associated with Louis Althusser, only Etienne Balibar is qualified to offer us useful insights. Balibar underscores the point that equality and freedom are complementary values and should continue to coexist, and, for this, he even created a portmanteau: égaliberté (equaliberty). He is willing to use words that are uninspiring and “uncool,” such as “social welfare, equal rights, education, morality, and religious tolerance,” and claims that after the subject, the citizen enters the stage. Citizens are inseparable from equality, freedom, and democracy. His inexorable investigations of the notions and categories of secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism, internationalism, and social justice are profound11 and have inspired me to think about China’s (including Hong Kong’s) issues in Beijing. Balibar also helps intellectuals and social activists from all backgrounds find a common discourse, an overlapping consensus, and collaboration nodes.12 Although Balibar was branded by Badiou as a reformist, such an accusation shows that revolutionary rhetoric and high-profile regurgitation of communist ideology have no practical place in actual social movements. 9. The two Chinese-language interviews of Chan Koonchung are by Qi Ke (2014) and Zhou Lian (2014). 10. Prior to 1949, besides the Communists, the Chinese left wing included anarchism and social democracy, and the latter was popular among the intellectuals; for instance, Hu Shih (“liberal socialism”) and Chinese social democrats such as Zhang Junmei (Carsun Chang) and Zhang Dongsun (Chang Tung-sun). In Ill Fares the Land (2012), Tony Judt states that social democracy “represents neither an ideal future nor an ideal past, it is better than anything else to hand.” Jon Cruddas and Andrea Nahles summarize the democratic left wing’s goal to build a “good society,” a “more egalitarian economy,” and a “secure, green, and fair future.” For more on social democracy in Europe, see Berman Sheri’s The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Henning Meyer and Jonathan Rutherford, eds., The Future of European Social Democracy: Building the Good Society (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 11. See Etienne Balibar’s Equaliberty: Political Essays (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); and “A racism without Races: an Interview with Etienne Balibar” by Clément Petitjean (2014); and “Citizen Balibar: an Interview with Etienne Balibar” by Nicolas Duvoux and Pascal Sévérac, translated by Michael C. Behrent (2012). 12. For instance, we can discuss with the Rawlsian left-wing liberal intellectuals in the Chinese-speaking world, see Chow Po-chung (2014), Sechin Yeong-Shyang Chien (2014), and I-Chung Chen (2014).
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Granted, advocates of the multitudes and the autonomists do not want to use Thomas Hobbes’s understanding of “the people.” Rather, they insist on the plurality of the multitudes but never the uniformity of the people. For them, the term “people” gives rise to the oppressive sovereign state, including its government. For instance, la République française was formed by the French people; the Chinese “people” rose up, in 1949, as the People’s Republic of China was founded; and, in other uncountable instances, state crimes were committed in the name of “the people.” Baruch Spinoza’s term the “multitudes” is the antonym of the people in a nation-state. However, the multitudes subjectively tend to cling to the image of “the people.” Take the 2014 rally to stop a cross-straits service trade pact from passing the legislature in Taiwan, for example. The multitudes imagine a democracy within the existing institutions or system and merely challenge—rather than overturn—the existing legal-political apparatus and hierarchical order. This leaves us with two understandings of the social movement’s process and outcome. One is similar to what Chantal Mouffe calls the Left’s alternative for radical democracy.13 With the first assumption, the proletariat or multitudes are ultimately able to redeem themselves by bypassing the governmental mechanisms and the sovereign state, and create a “harmonious society” that resolves all social conflicts. The second assumption is that discord exists in all genuinely diverse societies, and clashes between different social forces are inevitable. Politics, in this view, is Gramscian struggle for leadership, and the battlefields are situated within and without the institutions, on the streets, in the assemblies, and in the political establishments, both in “spirit” and in material life. For this struggle, all classes and multitudes sometimes need to set up nodes or even organize a united front, in which the participants attempt to reach— albeit temporary or incremental—core values, overlapping consensuses, and goals. Even if this group does not call itself “the people” (or refer to collective consciousness, solidarity, looking out for one another, or concentricity), it should lead to an awareness of “us,” vis-à-vis that of “them,” as constructed in the process of the struggle. As a result, the final seizing of the leadership marks the moment the people triumphantly turn the opposition into the new political establishment. The people need not be democrats bringing about liberation, as they too could be fascists bringing about oppression. As this logic goes, if Karl Marx could be viewed as one form of cognizance, and Max Weber as the second form of cognizance, then Hart and Negri, Virno, and the communist theologians belong to the first form, and Antonio Gramsci, Mouffe, Balibar, the social democrats, and even Isaiah Berlin all belong to the second form. Early utopian socialism and communism; the spontaneous, cooperative, and anarchist society as favored by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; free market fundamentalism; and Confucian society are all manifestations of the first form. The first form of cognizance means the political realm will eventually cease to exist. The second form of cognizance brings us never-ending political strife, and antagonism between different social parties becomes the norm of our diverse community. Mouffe (and Ernesto Laclau) endorses the second form and the attendant view of the Left, seeing society as diverse and dynamic. This type of agonist democracy is the 13. See Chantal Mouffe’s Critique as Counter Hegemonic Intervention (2008); and The Democratic Paradox (New York: Verso, 2000); see also Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (New York: Verso, 1985).
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product of adroitly transforming Schmittian antagonistic politics into political coexistence, but its political form is not limited to representative democracy, consensual democracy, republican participatory democracy, direct democracy, democracy by plebiscite, or presentist democracy, as democratic politics is based on truly diverse disagreements and competition. If the firm form of cognizance still bears the traces of utopia and dystopia, then the second form is a testament to our ambiguous situation in that we are neither in a utopian nor a dystopian world. At this moment, the multitudes’ subjectivity is waking up from a utopic wet dream or a dystopian nightmare, with its genitals still reacting to the stimuli. While it appears that the plot of the dream may develop according to its unconscious wishes, the faint echoes of the song “Do You Hear the People Sing?” still reach the subject’s ears. Some choose to wake up thanks to their will to do so, but some prefer snoozing and rolling in bed, and many more seem to realize that they are in a dreamscape and yet are unable to wake themselves up. To use another metaphor, I want to discuss the state of heterotopia. “Heterotopia,” as a noun, is a term coined by Michel Foucault (as an adjective, “heterotopic” has an even longer history), and I cannot help but appropriate the term to discuss my ideas. The notion of heterotopia implies imagining a society from multiple angles, similar to the compound eyes of a fruit fly or feline night vision, with which humans might see what they are unable to see now. As the early modern Chinese writer Lu Xun puts it poetically, “Those who love to go about life in the dark of the night need a pair of retooled eyes to see and a pair of retooled ears to hear in the dark: at ease in the dark, and seeing in the dark.”14 Nevertheless, my use of the term may be different from Foucault’s, as I use it in contrast with another mode of social thinking, utopian and dystopian thinking. The stem -topia, as we know, comes from earlier topos, a concept related to place, field, topology, and space. Hetero- means “different” or “other,” as in “heterosexual,” “heteromorphic,” and “heterozygote,” connoting difference or multiplicity. In its broadest sense, heterotopia is a field or space marked by difference, and that includes physical space, private space, public space, virtual space, imaginary space, outer space. Moreover, it also covers naturescape, artificial landscape, technoscape, semioscape, virtualscape, and mindscape. It could also be any alternative space or any banal, everyday field, as a heterotopia is devoid of an essence or clear boundaries. Its border is not only porous but also allows infiltration of difference, as we can visualize in the Tai Chi ideogram (black in the white field, and white in the black field). Heterotopia could be polycentric or decentric; a heteropia’s center is no longer tenable (as in a now-famous maxim attributed to Jacques Derrida, “The center is not the center.”). With this notion, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, and nonlineality, transposition, and whirl trajectory may appear. Here, I will adopt an expansive meaning of the term to envision the possibility of social innovation in the twenty-first century. When the word “utopia” appeared in the sixteenth century,15 the letter u encompasses both ou- (illusion) and eu- (beauty), and in the utopian novels of the late nineteenth century, such as Looking Back, by political reformist Edward Bellamy, and News from Nowhere, by social innovator and conservationist William Morris, the authors imagine what they think is a beautiful but presently nonexistent future world in order 14. See Lu Xun’s “Ode to the Night” (1933). 15. See Thomas More’s Utopia: On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia (1516).
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to highlight the current world’s imperfection. Therefore, utopian novels have two aims; namely, they serve as a grand refusal of the current world,16 and they uphold the belief that a brand new and good society will come. Robert Owen, a great social innovator, even attempted to build a utopian community in the world on his own. In the past two centuries, a lot of people have had utopian dreams and have tried to realize them. These attempts have mostly failed and even created the greatest calamity in human history in the twentieth century. What human beings have experienced is not utopia as many predicted but its perverse antithesis, dystopia. Therefore, after the First World War in the twentieth century, novelists began writing dystopian novels as cautionary tales. They urge us not to give in to others’ easy promises of a perfect future. Although dystopian novels are also allegories of the present day, they portray a future that betrayed us, and our dreams will turn into nightmares. Generally speaking, two forms of authoritarian society in the twentieth century are viewed as closest to the archetype of dystopia.17 These instances are undeniable, evidence-based, and historical human experiences for which we have paid extremely high human costs; however, it is also possible for every form of society to become its proper dystopia. In the 1924 novel We, Yevgeny Zamyatin depicts a high-tech dystopia, and in the 1932 novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley portends a hedonist dystopia. As early as 1907, Jack London’s novel The Iron Heel warns the public that American democratic institutions, too, can degenerate into a fascist dystopia. To this day, dystopia and the end of the world are important themes of the science fiction genre. This chapter does not aim to underscore the optimism and naïveté of utopian thoughts or the pessimism and defeatism of dystopian thoughts. Rather, in the context of this chapter, I view utopia as the grand acceptance and dystopia, on the contrary, as the grand refusal. These two represent the dichotomy between heaven and hell, us versus them, all or nothing. In Chinese scholar Zhang Ning’s words, this is the logic of King Midas: the choice is always between all-good and all-bad.18 Utopian and dystopian narratives mostly depict a self-contained, monolithic future society, and its hierarchal order (or the lack thereof) is stable and complete. In postmodern terms, it is a totalizing, homogenized grand narrative. In such a society, particularly in the dystopian variant, queers and dissidents are either unseen or already rendered invisible as the majority’s senses are distributed in order to exclude these outsiders. There is no space for social or political commentary, let alone a civil society in which people can innovate. As these few and lone outsiders are isolated, their situation can be compared to the powerful image in the preface of Lu Xun’s 1922 book, Call to Arms, a few light sleepers waking up in an iron house without windows or air. 16. The term “grand refusal” is from Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964). The first generation and second generation of the Frankfurt School tended to issue a grand and totalizing refusal of existing institutions; for instance, Max Horkheimer’s “The Longing for the Totally Other” and Theodor Adorno’s notion of “instrumental reason,” are related by Richard Wolin to the two figures’ Nietzschean dimension; for details, see Richard Wolin’s The Frankfurt School Revisited and Other Essays on Politics and Society (New York: Routledge, 2006). 17. George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-four is the best representative work of a Communist dystopia. Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) depicts a Fascist dystopia that rules Europe for centuries as the “Thousand Year Reich.” 18. In Greek mythology, King Midas adored gold, and had been given the power by Dionysus to turn everything he touched into gold. His daughter was turned into gold, and his food was similarly turned into gold and became inedible. Zhang Ning uses this myth to compare characters who made absolute all-ornothing choices throughout Chinese history.
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Hollywood has repeatedly produced cinematic images of utopia and dystopia, in which are also embedded moral messages and romance. These big-production action films follow a formulaic plot that is easily recognizable. There usually exists a utopic and peaceful society, but, as evil forces invade, the utopia is wiped out. But when the windowless iron house’s door is about to close, or moments before the triumph of the evil forces, a few people, usually the lead actor and actress, by force of their sheer positive will, turn the tide, annihilate evil, and rebuild the utopia. In last year’s Disney animation Frozen, for instance, Princess Elsa has the magic power to turn every object she touches into ice. As she is kidnapped and her Midas touch abused, the utopian kingdom turns into a frozen dystopia. Thanks to the true love of her sister, the spell is removed, and the kingdom thaws and is restored. This is the fable of saving utopia. Recent examples are too numerous to quote. The master builder in the animation The LEGO Movie reverses the course at the most critical moment. The ability to change the course completely relies on a plot structure that is based on a set of binary oppositions: us versus them, good versus evil, and utopia versus dystopia. The Hollywood formula indicates that utopian and dystopian imagination, the hero romance, and the characters of prince and princess are real crowd pleasers. This is the reason why Fredric Jameson believes that what Ernst Bloch calls the “concrete” utopian dreams and energies—and the hope and control that come with them—are alive and well in our popular culture and everyday life.19 For social activists, this is a paradox: Without the utopian call to arms, how do we mobilize the crowds? Without projecting a dystopian future, how can the multitudes conceive a negative object? For people who are more sensitive to realism, without the notion of dystopia, without the lessons of history, and without allegories depicting the dystopia, it will not be easy to comprehend how evil and ugly it may be. Without the mediation of dystopia, history may repeat itself. Nowadays, only crooks and ignorant people can restrict themselves to presenting a blueprint for utopia. The quest for utopia competes with our conscience for attention and energy, but we end up with hopelessness, despair, and utter abandonment. The more we hope for, the more we are in for disappointment. Similarly, focusing on the dystopian qualities in the existing world brings hopelessness, despair, and utter abandonment. We no longer even believe that we are the creators of history, and, out of desperation, we need to proclaim Martin Heidegger’s famous phrase, “Only a God can save us.” Hopelessness, despair, and utter abandonment. Under an evil regime, the people work tirelessly to become good citizens. This situation has been duly summarized by Tony Judt in Ill Fares the Land, “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. . . . And yet we seem unable to conceive of alternatives.”20 The older generation of Marxist blames the “false consciousness” imposed by the ruling class, the blindness caused by ideology, or the lack of scientific knowledge for political inertia and complacency. The people do not act, because they do not know. However, Slavoj Žižek describes the situation as “they know, but they still do not act.” This subjectivity, rooted in dystopian imagination, does not allow one to see agency in a defeatist world. It manifests itself as the behavior of model citizens, escapists, defeatists, 19. See Fredric Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso, 2005) and “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” (1979). 20. See Tony Judt’s Ill Fares the Land (2011).
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cynics, opportunists, collaborators, relativists, Pococurantes, and so on. Some have ulterior motives, some have vested interests, some serve two masters, and some just exploit the others. These characters fall within a spectrum: at one end, some see only futility; in the middle, some evade any responsibility as they do no wrong; and, at the other end, some do wrong because they are never accountable. They know, but they still do not act differently. Contemporary model citizens and the ruler’s collaborators exist in different societies for different reasons, and here I am not going to elaborate on each society’s specificity and the features that are common to all societies. I have perhaps talked too much about why people do not want change. For the social activists who do want change, I move back to the imaginary space for an alternative diverse society: Heterotopia. If our reading of Foucault does not dance to the tune of his peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, we could see heterotopia as a somewhat inscrutable, polymorphous, polycentric, and decentric field, contained within the windowless iron house. This field could be a grand but decayed labyrinth in ruin, its shallow surface covered with a vast network of Deleuzian rhizomatic connections and disjunctions. At times, the rhizome sprouts, buds, and the new stem grows to a considerable length, and yet it could shrink to its original size. The shape of a rhizome cannot be predetermined, and the sprouts at one end may affect the growth of the other end. Once the growth has reached its critical point, it may even become an event that demolishes the labyrinth’s structure. Perhaps its effects are only temporary and the existing structure can be restored. A rhizome is such a polymorphous embodiment. In the labyrinth, power is only a glorified gown infested with fleas, whoever wears it will feel uncomfortable, and each monadic individual moves at a snail’s pace and is overtaxed and overburdened. Snails are an apt metaphor for these monads (but probably not in the same fantastic mode as the portrayal of the hero in the animation Turbo). Each has its own way to till the land but needs to make sure it does not get eaten first by a predator. Social change is slow, and its direction unpredictable, but it is not impossible. Here, I must add, my choice of metaphor, a snail, is motivated by my faith in the human capacity to rise above personal constraints and the ability of human agency to enact social change, and I by no means want to hamper my readers’ imaginations. They may think of themselves as seagulls ruling the coastal skies, stray cats hopping from one roof to another, or a Bodhisattva, whose goal is to save the sentient beings drowning in the sea of attachment. Agents of change could also be androgynous, cyborgs, or cybernetic and be compared to ants, worker bees, dogs, rats, sheep, and wolves, which playfully destabilize these common derogatory labels one often uses and, in the process, unfold these metaphors’ multiple and potentially emancipatory meanings. The world of Heterotopia is not flat, nor is it fluid; it is a jigsaw puzzle, a parcourse, a series of cognitive, psychological, and ideological obstacle courses. The heterotopian “reality” is not a mere simulacrum or a constructivist world. Heterotopia has a basis in a reality, and this reality is at least partially predictable, describable, foreseeable, and culturally transmittable. It is derived from multiple sources. Its constituent elements clash with one another. Its boundaries are blurry. It is fragmentary and volatile. It exists at many levels and is present in both physical and metaphysical realms. Through the conscious and unconscious actions of many, Heterotopia keeps generating, disappearing, constructing, and deconstructing. It allows for a contextualized cognizance, which
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can also be sensed and experienced. Nevertheless, without lived, embodied existence, without context, without presence in the process, without the mediation of literature, images, and cinema, Heterotopia is an aporia whose representation is foreclosed. You have to hit the Enter key every time.21 Although Heterotopia is decentric, nonlinear, fragmentary, and amorphous, institutional or organization oppression remains, and the power structure stays intact. The persistent tensions of class, ethnicity, gender, geography, nation, and state continue to pull us apart, and the police and the PaNDa-BioPol are still there to enforce discipline and surveillance. On the contrary, they might be more virulent and menacing, although not to the extent of a windowless iron house. Change is possible with this imaginary of Heterotopia. It replaces the utopian and dystopian imaginations most familiar to the public and affirms the existence of multiple spaces in which movements, discourses, and organizations are permitted. However, in this kind of society, clashes between the multitudes and interests are unavoidable. Each will vie for leadership in different sectors of society and assemble into organizations, which will sprout up everywhere in the following forms: citizens (constitutionalism), communities (the first form of communitarianism), ethnic groups (the second form of communitarianism), professionals (the first form of the politics of common interest), those whose interests have been affected (the second form of the politics of common interest), trade groups (the first form of class politics), classes (the second form of class politics), marginalized or minority groups (the first form of identity politics), generations (the second form of identity politics), groups defending social progress (humanitarianism, equal rights, animal rights, environmentalism, internationalism, etc.), or multitudes (anarchism). The have-nots will have a stake, although they may not practice a political form of putschism (which belongs to the all-or-nothing logic of utopia and dystopia), but their inclusion could necessitate institutional and policy reforms or social innovation at many points in different social fields. This kind of change in the way people think gives social innovators more space for imagination and nodes for fostering actions and movements. In this chapter, I offer a mere critique—and not an outright refusal—of the utopian and dystopian imaginations. I am concerned that conventional utopian and dystopian thought may have already shaped and conditioned the collective imagination of social movements. Therefore, the notion of heterotopia, an alternate reality, may open up more doors to movements in disparate social fields. Utopia has long been sought throughout human history, from the “Great Unity” in the Book of Rites, the Peach Blossom Spring, the Shangri-la from the past, to the contemporary singer John Lennon’s interpretation in “Imagine”; as Balibar remarks, utopia allows us to imagine a replacement to exploitation, domination, and hate. As our memory of the dystopian nightmare is still fresh, we should keep proposing utopian demands that are not rooted in a naïve and
21. See Donna Haraway’s The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004); this essay uses a lot of animals and non-human life forms as metaphors, and I am partly inspired by Haraway’s “posthuman” thought as a response to erase dichotomies.
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totalizing utopian dream.22 They are wishes for a good society and our hope for the future. Perhaps they are our nonhomogenized, heterotopian utopian imagination.23 Finally, let us turn back to the question, “Have we done the research for the shift?” Intellectuals tend to be overcautious and one step ahead of the rest of society, but first they, like everyone else, should not fall into the trap of the utopian-dystopian dichotomy. It would be naïve to think that getting rid of one center of power will be followed by a predetermined plan for the voice of reason to establish a second center of power. Politics will never be a one-off coup or putsch, and it would be reckless to conceive of an ultimate solution to every problem. The quest for an exclusive and totalizing answer will short-circuit our thoughts and lead to nowhere. If one arrives at any of the following conclusions, then one is well on the way to becoming a spokesperson for the rulers: “One-sided and sporadic action is futile! Any action without a plan for the superstructure is futile! A plan for the superstructure, then change! No plan leads to chaos! Chaos will lead to more chaos! No chaos at all costs!” These self-appointed advisers and think tank staffers speak for those in power, or, at best, they turn into social control freaks, articulating dystopian messages. Events are contextual and are never isolated. The outcome can be greater than the cause, but there will always be a cause. There may be multiple outcomes. Events are more aptly conceived as nodes in a chain, which are movements, struggles between candidates for leadership; clashes between values, beliefs, and social cognition; or micro-movements initiated by the multitudes. Perhaps all my eyes can see is a still, lifeless body of water, but your compound eyes and night vision will paint a very different picture. Piercing the deceptive surface of the muddy water, you see microorganisms flourish. You see currents underneath ferrying creatures. You see rivers and other water systems joining the sea after a long terrestrial march. You see people dive into the water. You smell their adrenaline rush. Perhaps you can even feel the wave washing onto the shore, as the swimmers await their chance to work their bodies to the limits.
Bibliography Balibar, Etienne. Equaliberty: Political Essays. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Haraway, Donna. The Haraway Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin, 2005. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. New York: Verso, 1985. Meyer, Henning, and Jonathan Rutherford. The Future of European Social Democracy: Building the Good Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 22. For instance, in Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 utopian novel Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston, the author imagines the states of Washington, Oregon, and the northern part of California secede from the United States in an attempt to establish a progressive utopia, but the new nation wants to keep weapons of mass destruction to prevent the union from launching revanchist attacks. This is a contemporary utopian imagination, and on this novel, Ralph Nader says, “none of the happy conditions in Ecotopia are beyond the technical or resource reach of our society.” 23. See Anupama Mohan’s Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), in which she argues that many utopian imaginations are merely homotopian, and these homogenized utopias should be distinguished from the future, good, and genuine Utopia that allows for differences. Dystopian imagination also connotes homotopia, see Chan Koonchung (2004).
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Mohan, Anupama. Utopia and the Village in South Asian Literatures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso, 2000. Rawls, John. The Laws of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Rancière, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. ———. The Philosopher and His Poor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983. Sheri, Berman. The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Wolin, Richard. The Frankfurt School Revisited and Other Essays on Politics and Society. New York: Routledge, 2006. Žižek, Slavoj. Event: Philosophy in Transit. New York: Penguin 2014.
Contributors
In chapter order Cho-yun Hsu (許倬雲) is emeritus professor of history and sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, and also a member of the Academica Sinica. Ge Zhaoguang (葛兆光) is professor, National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies and the Department of History at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Peter Zarrow (沙培德) is professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He is also currently an adjunct research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica. David Der-wei Wang (王德威) is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Harvard. He is also director of CCK Foundation InterUniversity Center for Sinological Studies, and Academician, Academia Sinica. Xu Jilin (許紀霖) is professor of history at East China Normal University. He specializes in twentieth-century Chinese intellectual history. Huang Kuan-Min (黃冠閔) is a research fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. He is also is affiliated to the Department of Philosophy at National Chengchi University. Hang Tu (涂航) is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese literature at Harvard. Yinde Zhang (張寅德) is university professor at the University of Sorbonne NouvelleParis 3, France. Jianmei Liu (劉劍梅) is professor at the Division of Humanities of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Shuang Xu (徐爽) is associate professor of literature at Paris-Diderot University and a member of the East Asian Civilizations Research Centre (CRCAO) in France. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Chinese literature and web literature in China. Chien-Hsin Tsai (蔡建鑫) is PhD in Chinese and Sinophone literature, Harvard University. Carlos Rojas (羅鵬) is professor of Chinese cultural studies; gender, sexuality, and feminist studies; and arts of the moving image at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of Duke University. Sebastian Veg (魏簡) is professor (directeur d’études) of intellectual history of twentieth-century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris and an honorary professor at the University of Hong Kong. Chan Koonchung (陳冠中) is a Hong Kong writer of Sinophone fictions and nonfictions. He currently lives in Beijing.
Index
2003 Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), 205–6 2011 prodemocracy protest in China, 189 2014 Hong Kong democracy protests. See Umbrella Movement absolute spiritual freedom. See Zhuangzi Adorno, Theodor W.: “melancholy science,” 112; on negation in utopia, 118; Wolin’s use of “instrumental reason,” 217n16 Agamben, Giorgio, 109, 188 Ah Q. See True Story of Ah Q “All under Heaven.” See tianxia Allinson, Robert, 143 Althusser, Louis, 214 Anders, Gunter. See “obsolete man” Anderson, Benedict. See imagined community Anticipatory utopia. See utopia, anticipatory Negri, Antonio. See Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri Appiah, Kwame: concept of cosmopolitan patriots, 87. See also cosmopolitanism: and patriotism Arab Spring, 189 Augustine, City of God, 84 Bachelard’s theory of a poetic space, 148 Badiou, Alain, 213, 224 Bai Juyi 白居易, 144 Balibar, Etienne: égaliberté (equaliberty), 214; on social discord, 215; utopia as imaginative tool, 220 Ban Gu 班固, 167–68 “barbarian,” Chinese concept of: in political thought, 24, 25–26, 29, 32–33; dystopian view, 92; Gongyang School debates on, 30–31; in utopian thought, 92; terms (rong, man, yi, di 戎蠻夷狄), 17, 18, 26, 92. Xiong Shili’s reconceptualization, 93. See also Xiong Shili
Bataille, Georges: lack, excess, and ecstasy, 127 Beck, Ulrich: cosmopolitanism and “cosmopolitanization.” See cosmopolitanization Berlin, Isaiah: comparison with Zhuangzi, 130–34; on social discord, 215; positive versus negative freedom, 130–31. See also freedom; Zhuangzi Berry, Michael: 1997 handover, 173–74 Bloch, Ernst: compensatory versus realizable utopia, 100n4; “concrete” utopian dreams, 217; positive value to utopia, 54n2 bone oracles, 1–2. See also state, concept of: early dynasties Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經): use in Midnight After (Fruit Chan). See Midnight After: dislocation, sense of Bowie, David. See Midnight After, The: use of “Space Oddity” Britain. See Great Britain Candide, 54n4, 60. See also Pangloss Cao Guanlong 曹冠龍: Chen 沉 (“Sinking,” novel), 65 Cao Juren: intellectual revolutionaries, 78–79; “military” versus “cultural” revolutionaries, 79. See also wandering scholars Cao Xueqin. See Shitou ji (The story of the stone) Chan, Fruit 陳果 (filmmaker): allegorical concerns, 191–92; allusions to Fukushima, 188; fireworks metaphor, 174; Hong Kong trilogy (Made in Hong Kong, Longest Summer, Little Cheung), 174; The Longest Summer (Qunian yanhua tebieduo 去年煙 花特別多, 1998), 174–75, 179–80, 191; The Midnight After: see The Midnight After; and Hong Kong’s Sinophone explosion, 179; sounds and language in films, 179–81
Index 225 Chang Hao 張灝: polemics of crisis and contingency, 55; utopian imagery 62–64. See also “dark consciousness” Chang, Eileen (Zhang Ailing) 張愛玲, 170–71, 179; Chu T’ien-hsin on, 171; explosions as metaphor, 171; Hu Lancheng on, 171; Little Reunion (Xiao tuanyuan 小團圓), 171; Love in a Fallen City (Qingcheng zhi lian 傾城之戀), 170–71; and male writers compared, 171; use of onomatopoeia, 179 Changzhou Gongyang School. See Gongyang School Chan Kin-man. See Occupy trio Chan Koonchung 陳冠中: Shengshi 盛世 (novel), 54, 67–68 Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, 38; anti-Confucianism, 40; attack on Confucianism, 40; democracy, 41–45, 51; influence of John Dewey, 42, 45; liberalism, 38–46; nations, 40, 45–46; organic metaphor of the state, 44; politics, 41–42; “science and democracy” as a utopian scheme, 50; “utopianist impulses,” 44–45, 49–50. See also Hu Shi Chen Gongbo, and Wang Jingwei, 80 Chen Guying, 144. See also Zhuangzi: on freedom Chen Li 陳立. See Gongyang School Chen Qimei, 79. See also Cao Juren: “military” versus “cultural” revolutionaries Chen Tianhua, 75. See also Tongmenhui Chen Yingshi, 79. See also Cao Juren: “military” versus “cultural” revolutionaries Chiang Kai-shek, 79. See also Cao Juren: “military” versus “cultural” revolutionaries China model. See Chinese expectionalism, theory of China, People’s Republic of, 67, 83, 104, 172, 197, 215 “Chinese Dream,” 21; concept, 53; rhetoric, 54; speech, 53, 67; Panglossian interpretation, 61; utopian dimension, 53–54. See also Xi Jinping Chinese exceptionalism, theory of: evolution, 23 Chinese world government imagined, 21. See also Mo Luo; Wang Xiaodong; Yao Zhongqiu Chow, Alex, 198, 200. See also Hong Kong Federation of Students; Umbrella Movement Chu T’ien-hsin 朱天心. See Chang, Eileen: Chu T’ien-hsin on Chu Yiu-ming. See Occupy trio
Chunjin jiangnan 春盡江南 (Spring ends in the south of the Yangtze River, 2011). See Ge Fei: Wutuobang sanbuqu 烏托邦三部曲 (Trilogy of utopia) civilization-state, Chinese, 23–24 civilization: as progress, 39; equated with “Sinitic,” 42 Clementi, Cecil, 167–68 communism: philia as corrective in Chinese Marxism, 123; political project versus technological control, 84; unitary view of political process and outcome, 215 communitas (unstructured community): definition, 189, 193–94; formation, 184–85; theme in Midnight After, 184–89; Turner’s interpretation, 189. See also Esposito, Roberto; Midnight After community formation. See communitas: formation community, unstructured, 189. See also communitas Companion (Banlü 伴侶, literary journal), 168. See also Lu Xun Confucianism: utopian elements, 84 Confucianism: cosmology, 40, 76; assumed primacy of “harmonious society,” 215; cosmopolitanism: see under Xiong Shili; Han overinterpretation of, 15–26; morality, 40, 57, 74, 76; orthodoxy (daotong 道統), 21; traditional political thought, 6–11, 25–26. See also Confucius, Dong Zhongshu; Guan Zhong; He Xiu; tianxia zhuyi Confucianism in modern political thought, 20, 25–32, 63n31, 74, 103, 110–11, 130; in revolutionary thought, 76; criticism, 62–63. See also Chang Hao; Gan Yang; Jiang Qing; Kang Youwei; Liang Qichao; unadorned king; Wu Jianren, Xiong Shili Confucian Sinocentrism (tianxia zhuyi 天 下主義). See tianming (All under Heaven); tianxia zhuyi (conceptualized Sinocentrism); tianxia zhixu (politicized world order) Confucius (Kongzi 孔子), 124n20; comparison with Laozi, 3–5; ideal political order, 3, 4–5 Confucius Institute, 53 corporeality: effects, 148; in Tianxia Guiyuan’s novels, 148–50; theory of, 147. See also Empress Fuyao: heterotopian body; heterotopian bodies; incorporeality; utopian bodies cosmology, organic. See Confucian cosmology
226 Index cosmopolitan modernity. See Hu Shi: cosmopolitan modern cosmopolitan universalism. See cosmopolitanism: foundation in universalism cosmopolitanism: ancient Greek concept of, 85–86; Confucian, as a developmental goal, 91; enlightenment, 102; foundation in universalism, 87–88; Kantian concept of, 86–87; Maoist interpretation, 108; and patriotism, 87; utopia and, 91, 98. See also Hu Shi; Xiong Shili cosmopolitics, 87 cosmopolitinization, 87. See also cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitics counterutopia. See dystopia crisis consciousness in Chinese utopian thinking, 60, 61, 62. See also Chang Hao, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao Cultural Revolution, 65, 66, 107; echoes of, 172; Wang Hui on, 108; Zhou Zuoren on, 138 Dai Wangshu 戴望舒; “Battle Cry,” 168–69; political themes in poetry, 170, 171. See also Eileen Chang, Xu Chi dao 道 (“Way”): all-encompassing, 130, 134 Daoist “anarchists,” 9–10 “dark consciousness,” 62–64, 68; and “crisis consciousness,” 62; and democracy, 62; desire in, 63; criticisms of, 62–63; origins in Chinese traditional thought, 62; origins in Weber, 62. See also Chang Hao decent society, 212; John Rawls on, 212n5 Delanty, Gerard, 87, 88. See also cosmopolitan universalism democracy: agonist, 215–16; emancipatory dimensions in Hong Kong, 209; in 2014 Hong Kong protests, 208; in 2014 Taiwan protests; 215; liberal, 209; libertarian, 123; patriotism and deferral of, 207 democracy, interpretations of: Chang Hao, 62; Chen Duxiu, 39–46; Chen Duxiu versus Hu Shi, 38, 51; Ge Fei, 123; Hu Shi, 46, 49–50; Jiang Qing, 63n31; Liang Qichao, 53; Xiong Shili, 90, 91, 95–97. See also democracy democracy protests in Hong Kong. See Occupy Central, Umbrella movement Dengism, 54, 59 Derrida, Jacques, 99, 216 desire: democracy and, 95; in Gongteng Shenxiu’s Flowers of Four Seasons, 152; and historical temporality, 119–120; metaphorization of, 119; and memory, 127; in
Tianxia Guiyun’s Empress Fuyao, 150; and virtuous rule, 90; utopian, 99, 122 Dewey, John. See Chen Duxiu: influence of John Dewey Diqiu wangshi 地球往事 (Chronicles of the earth). See Liu Cixin Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒, 9, 20; and modern utopian political alternatives, 32; influence on Kang Youwei, 28; method of differential treatment, 25–26; modern overinterpretation, 25–26; tianxia, 25; use of “unadorned king” concept, 89 Du Yaquan: on aristocrat-vagrant duality, 73, 75. See also Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi) Duke Huan of Qi 齊桓公, 5–6, 25. See also Guan Zhong Dung Kai Cheung 蕫啟章, 176–77; language and local identity, 177 dystopia: Ge Fei’s criticism of, 119–21; as a genre, 65; forms in authoritarian society, 216. See also dystopian literature and art; heterotopia; utopia dystopian literature and art, vii; and culture of indifference, 129; “dark consciousness” in, 63; examples, 129; predominance in fiction, 55; Republican era, 55–58; in postrevolutionary China, 129, 143–44; presence in Chinese literature, 54. See also dystopian mood; utopian literature dystopian versus utopian. See utopian versus dystopian dystopian mood, 129 égaliberté (equaliberty). See Balibar, Etienne elite intellectuals: as “free-floating resources” after 1911, 73. See also wandering scholars Elman, Benjamin A., 30, 31 empire: growth of, 22. See also Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri Empress Fuyao 扶搖皇后 (Tianxia Guiyuan), 148; analysis, 149–53, 154–59; heterotopian body, 152–53; heterotopian space, 152–53; heterotopian world, 150; internet aspect, 154–59; metaphor, 152, 153; “temper” (chuang 闖), 152; time traveling body, 149. See also internet literature, Chinese; Tianxia Guiyuan; utopian literature: internet as new genre Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, 102 Esposito, Roberto: concept of communitas, 193–94. See also communitas Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics (Dujing shiyao, 1945), 89–95; critique of,
Index 227 92; “world in common,” 94. See also Xiong Shili ethic: of conviction (Gesinnungsethik), 79–80; of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik). See also “reflective equilibrium,” Wang Jingwei: political ethics Evolution of the Cosmos (Qian kun yan, 1961): distinction between Grand Way and modest well-being, 88–89. See also Xiong Shili explosion as metaphor: Eileen Chang, 161, 169; for growth of Sinophone culture, 179–80; for Hong Kong literature, 175–79; for power of language, 165; in Fruit Chan films, 179–81; in Lu Xun, 166; pineapple as a bomb metaphor, 173 explosion of literature. See explosion as metaphor: for Hong Kong literature explosions, descriptions of: in poetry and fiction, 168–75 Fajia 法家 (Legalist) school, 6. See also Xunzi Fei Ying. See Lin Yutang: comparisons Foucault, Michel: biopolitics, 188; corporeality concept: see corporeality; heterotopia concept: see heterotopia; ideas as explosives, 176. See also corporeality; incorporeality concept of “utopian bodies,” 147; theory of corporeality, 147. See also heterotopia; utopian bodies freedom: “acosmic,” 125; Berlin and Zhuangzi compared, 130–34; Chen Duxiu, 39, 40, 42; in Kantian cosmopolitanism, 86; Li Zehou on, 101, 103, 105; Liang Qichao; Lu Xun, 64; utopia of, 77; “utopian man” and, 121, 125; Xiong Shili on, 89. See also Balibar, Etienne; Berlin, Isaiah; Rawls, John; Zhuangzi French Revolution: interpretations of, 39–40 “future perfect” mood, 56, 66–67 Gan Yang 甘陽: see Panglossian; three orthodoxies, unification of Ge Fei 格非: democracy in novels, 123; essay on Kafka’s Castle, 122; Jiangnan Trilogy: see Jiangnan Trilogy, 143–44; parody process, 119n4; use of symbols, 121; Wutuobang sanbuqu (Trilogy of utopia), 54; influence of Zhuangzhi, 143 Gloria Davies, 60. See also Liang Qichao: “crisis consciousness” concept Goncharov, Ivan. See “superfluous man” Gong Zizhen 龔自珍: influence of Gongyang school, 27, 30; on the power of literature,
176; poetics, 166. See also Gongyang school Gongyang Commentary (Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan 春秋公羊傳), 25; influence on Kang Youwei, 28, 29; contemporary interest, 30, 31. See also Jiang Qing; Kang Youwei; Liang Qichao Gongyang School (公羊學), 26–33; contemporary influence, 30–32, 59; early thought, 25–26; interpretations of, 59–60; Jiang Qing’s use of, 30–32, 59; Kang Youwei’s use of, 28–29, 59–60; Liang Qichao’s use of, 59–60; Qing revitalization, 27–28 reinterpretation of Spring and Autumn Annals, 27; theory of international order, 26–28. See also tianxia: in Gongyang School Gongyang Shou, 91. See also Gongyang Commentary, Gongyang School governmentality, new form of, 212. See also PaNDa-BioPol “grand talk” versus “small talk,” 63. See also “dark consciousness” Great Britain: and handover to China, 173–74; in Chinese history and political theory, 15, 32, 49, 93 Greek culture, influence in modern Chinese literature, 141 Guan Zhong 管仲: concept of state, 5, 7–8 Guanzi 管子. See Guan Zhong Han Song 韓松 (novelist): allusions to Red Star over China, 66; images of “dark consciousness,” 68; postapocalyptic worlds, 54; Red Star over America, 66. See also Red Star over China Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri: crowds, 213; on empire, 20, 22–23, 213 Harvey, David, 143 He Xiu: and Kang Youwei, 28; in Liang Qichao’s work 27; influence on critique of world system, 32; progression toward unity (ruoyi 若一), 26; three ages, 25, 91; tianxia, 26. See also tianxia Hegelian perspective, 102; coexistence of diverse ethical substances, 97; consciousness of history, 85; impulse of integration, 103. See also utopia, conservative; Mao Zedong: Hegelian logic Heidegger, Martin, 101, 218 Heisan senlin 黑暗森林 (Dark jungle, 2008). See Liu Cixin heterotopia (aka countersite), 216: as a space for change, 219; boat as a metaphor of, 153; Chan Koonchung’s use of, ix; in contemporary Chinese narrative literature,
228 Index 54; Foucault’s definition, 196, 211n1; significance, 153; and social innovation, 211; and territoriality, 152. See also Chan Koonchung: PaNDa-BioPol concept; dystopia; Heterotopia, imagined world of (Chan Koonchung); utopia Heterotopia, imagined world of (Chan Koonchung), 219–21 heterotopian bodies, 150–53. See also corporeality; heterotopia historical progress. See progress: historical HKFS. See Hong Kong Federation of Students Hollywood, portrayals of utopia and dystopia, 217 Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23, 190 Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), 184, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203 Hong Kong identity, 207 Hong Kong prodemocracy protests of 2014. See 2014 Hong Kong prodemocracy protests Hong Kong: colonial legacy of depoliticized and eternal Chinese culture, 205; post1949 problems of identity, 172–; 1967 riots in, 172–73; 1997 handover, 173–74 Honglou meng (The dream of the red chamber). See Shitou ji (The story of the stone) Hsia, C. T.: on Lu Xun, 64; on “obsession with China,” 130; types of discourse, 58–59 Hu Hanmin 胡漢民, 75, 76, 78 Hu Musheng, 91 Hu Ping 胡平, 62. See also “dark consciousness”: critiques Hu Shi 胡適, 38; and Chen Duxiu compared, 38; basis in cosmopolitan modernity and science, 46; dislike of Confucian revival, 46; cosmopolitan modern, 46; on democracy, 38, 46, 49–50, 51; on materialism, 47; on Wang Jingwei, 80; science as a religion, 48; utopian liberalism of, 46–50; West and USA as models, 46–47, 50; “big I” (大 我) versus “little I” (小我), 132; dislike of Confucian revival, 46. See also Chen Duxiu Huang Xing, 74, 75, 78. See also Tongmenhui humanism. See utopian humanism; Zhou Zouren Hundred Days’ Reform, 74 Huxley, Aldous, hedonist dystopia, 217 Huxley, Thomas. See Yan Fu: translation of Evolution and Ethics imagined community (Anderson), 184 incorporeality: in Empress Fuyao, 149. See also corporeality; Empress Fuyao; Foucault, Michel
Ingram, James. See cosmopolitics innate knowing (minzhi 良知): see Wang Jingwei inner sageliness: versus outer kingliness, 89. See also Inquiry into Confucianism; Xiong Shili Inquiry into Confucianism (Yuan Ru), 88, 95–96; definition of Confucianism, 88; principle of equality, 94–95; Rites of Zhou in, 95. See also Xiong Shili intelligentsia: aristocratic-vagrant nature, 76. See also Du Yaquan internet literature, Chinese, 147. See also internet time-travel fiction internet time-travel fiction, 149; anxiety about identity, 151; carnivalesque quality (Bakhtin), 157; emotionality in, 151; “female empowerment” subgenre, 151–52; heterotopian spaces in, 152–53; influence of traditional aesthetics, 157–58; significance of fan participation, 154–57; structure, 154–55; utopian potential, 154 Introduction to the Gongyang School. See Jiang Qing Jameson, Frederic: “cognitive mapping” of utopias, 54n2; on “concrete” utopian dreams, 218; oversight of revolutionary left utopias, 53–54n2 Jasmine Revolution (Tunisia), 189 Jiang Qing, 30–31; on Confucian democracy, 63n31; possible “sage-king” in democratic thought, 63n31; Introduction to the Gongyang School (公羊學引論), 30, 59; other works, promotion of Confucian learning, 59 Jiangnan Trilogy (Ge Fei, 2004–11, aka Southern Spring Played Out): art as social critique, 126; capitalist dystopia, 124; commentary on Zhai Yongming poem, “The Sadness of a Submarine,” 126; criticism of dystopic modernity, 121–22; limits of utopian consciousness, 120; Peach Blossom Beauty, 119–20; philia and social resistance, 121–23; representative dystopian literature, 129; tyranny in scientific rationalism, 122; utopic and dystopic binary, 119; utopian desire, 122; “utopian man,” 123; negative utopia, 123–24; “useless persons,” 124; negative utopia, 126 Jingke 荊軻, 75 Judt, Tony, on social democracy, 214n10, 217 July 1 (1997) vigils in Hong Kong, 189 June 4 (1989) vigils in Hong Kong, 189
Index 229 Kang Youwei, 28–29, 95; as “modern legislator,” 29; Book of Great Unity (Datong shu 大同書), 59, 130; influence of Gongyang School: see Gongyang School: Kang Youwei’s use of; misinterpretations of, 26–32; origins of utopianism in “Great Unity concept,” 36, 59; and Xiong Shili compared, 95. See also Jiang Qing; Liang Qichao; Xiong Shili Kant, Immanuel. See Kantian Kantian: cosmopolitanism, 86; perspective, 102; self-legislation, 100, 101–3, 104–5, 107. See Lee Minh-hui; Li Zehou Kelly, Gerard, 165 kingly way (wangdao 王道), 16, 90–91, 93; utopian goals in, 91 Kinkley, Jeffrey C., 118n3, 129, 143 knight-errant culture, China’s, 73–74 Kojevian utopia. See utopia: Kojevian Kuan Hsin-chi, 205 “Kuangren riji” (The diary of a madman): and Ma Jian’s Rouzhitu (Beijing coma), 65 Kuomingtang (KMT), 78 Lai Chai Hay 賴齋熙, 167 language and articulation of Chinese identity, 178 Laozi 老子, 3–4, 5; small state theory (xiaoguo guamin), 84; wuwei 無為 (nonaction), 141. See also Chen Guying, Zhuangzi Lau Siu Kai, 205 Law Wing-sang: resistance to (post)colonial system, 205 Lee Chi Hoi 李智海, 178 Lee Ming-hui 李明輝, 62 legalist (school), 6, 8 Levinas, Emmanuel. See under utopia of the human Li Shizeng, 78. See also Society for the Promotion of Morality Li Zehou 李澤厚, 100; call to “recuperate” May Fourth enlightenment values, 102; critique by Wang Hui, 106–; Critique of Critical Philosophy: A Study of Kant (1979), 101; “The Dual Theme of Enlightenment and National Salvation” (1986), 103; On Ancient Chinese Thought (1985), 102; On Early Modern Chinese Thought (1979), 102; on Mao’s early ideas, 103–4; On Modern Chinese Thoughts (1987); narrative of future anterior, 105. See also utopia, anticipatory Li Zhiyu: on martyrdom, 76, 77; on Wang Jingwei, 81 li 禮: concept of, 7
Liang Qichao : “crisis consciousness”concept, 60; discussions of Gongyang School, 26; influences on: Chen Duxiu, 41; Chen Koonchung’s The Fat Years, 67; Wu Jianren’s utopia, 57, 58; fiction and nationbuilding, 55–56; fiction as utopia, 68; and Kang Youwei, 59–60; utopian ideas, 53, 56, 57; Xin Zhongguo weilai ji (The future of New China), 53, 56, 59–60; works, 26. See also Chen Duxiu; crisis consciousness in Chinese utopian thinking; Minbao; Wu Jianren; Xinmin congbao Liang Shuming, 83, 97 Liao Ping, 28 liberalism in China, 37, 51. See also Hu Shi: utopian liberalism of liberals, Chinese, 214 Lin Yutang: comparisons, 139; contrast with Tao Yuanming, 140; The Importance of Living, 142; Lu Xun compared, 139; The Unexpected Islands: see Unexpected Islands Lin, Yü-sheng: on “cultural-intellectualistic approach,” 63; on totalism, 38n6 literature of persuasion, 59 Liu Cixin 劉慈欣 (novelist): works, 66–67; The Three-Body Problem: See Santi Liu Fenglu, 27; Gongyang School, 31, 32; influence on Kang Youwei, 30, 32; and New Text Confucians, 31 32. See also Liang Qichao; New Text Confucians; Zhuang Cunyu Liu Yichang 劉以鬯 (author): “Turmoil” (Dongluan 動亂), 172–73 London, Jack: The Iron Heel (novel), 216; on fascist dystopia, 216 “long-distance revolutionaries,” 75 Lourme, Louis, 87. See also cosmopolitanism: and patriotism Lu Xun, 64, 180; A Call to Arms (1922), metaphor of the iron house, 217; desire and revolutionary zeal, 64; dislike of Confucian classics, 167, 168; metaphor of sound, 166, 167, 180; on new ways of seeing society, 216; Panglossianism and dark consciousness in, 64, 68; “Silent China” speech, 180–81; YMCA speech, 166–68. See also Hsia, T. A.: on Lu Xun; “Kuangren riji” (The diary of a madman); The True Stoy of Ah Q; Wang Hui Lukács, Georg: Marx’s utopism versus ideology, 85 Ma Jian, 65; Rouzhitu, 54 Man, Paul de: see utopia, temporal
230 Index Mannheim, Karl: on utopia, 84; typology of utopia, 85 Mao Zedong’s early thought: early voluntarism, 104; Hegelian logic, 104, 105, 108; perceive Taoist dialectic, 104; “permanent revolutionist,” 104–5 martyr complex. See Wang Jingwei: Hu Shi on martyrdom, spirit of among revolutionaries, 75. See also Wang Jingwei: sacrifice, notions of Marx, Karl, 124n19; as utopist, 85 Marxism: ideology over utopism, 85 Marxism, Chinese: “peculiar paradox,” 110–11; “schizophrenic situation” in postrevolutionary era, 100, 112 Mbebe, Achilles: regime of necropolitics, 188 Mengzi (Mencius) 孟子: 124n19; belief in human perfectibility, 62; ideal social order, 6. See also non-person Midnight After, The (film, Fruit Chan, 2014): agency of community, 185; allegorical concerns, 191–92; allusions to June 1989, 187; dialectics of fragmentation and reconstitution, 188–89; difference from internet novel, 191; discursive origins, 185; dislocation, sense of, 194; exclusion and dehumanization, 185; generational rifts, 206–7, 208; infection and societal vulnerability, 187; influence of early films, 191–92; influence of past protests, 207; heterotopias, 194; necropolitics, 188; plot, 184–93; palimpsestic structure of memory and imagination, 190–91; re-engaging the past to reconstruct community, 193; protean community formation, 185; reconstituting social order, 186–87; social bonds, 190; symbolic capital of songs in, 179; temporal bonds in, 190; temporal displacement in, 191; use of “Space Oddity,” 188ss vertical and horizontal bonds, 190; virus metaphor, 187. See also Chan, Fruit; communitas; Pizza; Umbrella Movement; Zhang Xiaoxiang The Midnight After (novel), 180, 181, 191, 192 Minbao (People’s journal), 75, 76, 77 Ming Sing, 173 “minor utopias,” 38 Mo Luo: on Chinese world government, 21 More, Thomas, 84 Mouffe, Chantal, on radical democracy, 215; imagining the Left as diverse and dynamic, 215–16 “multitudes.” See Spinoza, Baruch nation: definitions of, 38
negative freedom: in modern China, 133. See Berlin, Isaiah: positive versus negative freedom; Zhuangzi negative utopian impulse: Jameson’s critique, 54n2 New Culture Movement, 37. See also Chen Duxiu; Hu Shi New Enlightenment (1980s), 101, 105, 106, 107. See also Li Zehou New Left, Chinese, 106, 214 New Text School: Benjamin Elman on, 30–31; Liang Qichao on, 26–27 New Treatise on Consciousness-Only (Xin weishi lun), 83. See Xiong Shili nihilism, Russian, 76; Chinese admiration of, 76–77 nihilism: definition, 77; or culture of indifference, in Mao’s thinking, 129. See also nihilism, Russian non-person (非人), notion, 124; Mencian influence, 124n19 Nussbaum, Martha. See cosmopolitanism: versus patriotism “obsolete man” (Anders), 123, 125; 143–44. See also “superfluous man”; “utopian man” Occupy Central (with Love and Peace), 184, 189, 199. See also Umbrella Movement Occupy Movement (global), 183, 189, 196, 202 Occupy trio, 198 Occupy Wall Street, 112, 190, 196, 208 outer kingliness (waiwang 外王): Xiong Shili’s reinterpretation, 83, 89–90, 97. See Xiong Shili PaNDa-BioPol world (Chan Koonchung), 212, 213 Pangloss, 60. See also “Panglossian” “Panglossian”: in contemporary Chinese utopian discourses, 60–61; “paradigm” (Gould and Lewontin), 60–61; Voltarian definition, 54 Panglossian nature of “Chinese Dream” concept, 61. See also “Chinese Dream”; “Panglossian” “Panglossian paradigm” (Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin), 60–61 Parsons, Talcott, 73 Peach Blossom Spring: example of utopianism, 84; time travel, 150 philia: as social resistance, 121–23. See also Ge Fei phonocentrism, 177n35 pineapple as a bomb metaphor: see under explosion as a metaphor
Index 231 Pizza. See The Midnight After (novel) Plato: Republic, 84, 211, 213 positive freedom. See Berlin, Isaiah: positive versus negative freedom progress: definitions of, 39; historical, 102–3; moral and political, 103 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 215 Pusey, James Reeve, 167 Pye, Lucien, 23 ramification of ideas (Peter Gordon), 101 Ramoneda, Josep, 129 Rancière, Jacques, on hierarchy in Plato, 212; on disobedience as genuine “politics,” 213–14 Red Star over China (Edgar Snow), 66 redemptive utopia. See utopia, redemptive “reflective equilibrium” between faith and reality, 79–80. See also ethic of conviction; Wang Jingwei: political ethics ren 仁 (benevolence), 57 Ricouer, Paul, 87 sage-king paradigm. See under state, concept of Said, Edward, 22 Santi 三體 (The three-body problem, 2007), 86–87; three-body concept, 86n42 Schmitt, Carl: use of concepts, 107–8, 109; politics of fear, 111; in dynamic conception of politics, 216 Scholarism, 184, 198, 203, 207. See also Umbrella Movement science fiction, Chinese: boom, 65; David Wang on, 159. See also time-travel fiction Segal, Howard: on utopias, 84 self-sacrifice. See Wang Jingwei: self-sacrifice, notions of, 78 self, “small” and “greater,” 78. See Wang Jingwei Shanhaijing (Classic of mountains and seas), 54, 65. See also Ma Jian: Rouzhitu Sheng Congwen. See Lin Yutang: comparisons shengshi 盛世 (epoch of peace and prosperity), 67 Shengshi (novel). See Chan Koonchung: Shengshi Shijing. See Book of Odes Shitou ji 石頭記 (The story of the stone, 1792), 57. See also Wu Jianren: Xin shitou ji Schwartz, Benjamin. See Zhuangzi: Benjamin Schwartz on moral judgment Shih, Shu-mei: fetishization of Cantonese, 178 Sinocentric world system, 24. See tianxia zhixu Sinocentrism. See tianxia, tianxia zhuyi
Sishen yongsheng 死神永生 (God of death lives forever, 2010). See Li Six Canonical Classics, On, 96–97. See also Book of Odes; Book of Changes; state, concept of: in Liji (Book of rites) social democracy: in China, 214, 214n10 Society for the Promotion of Morality (Jinde hui 進德會), 78. See also Wang Jingwei sociology of modern revolutionaries, 74 Song Jiaoren, 75, 78 Southern Spring Played Out. See Jiangnan Trilogy Spinoza, Baruch, concept of “multitudes,” 215 sound as a metaphor in modern Chinese literature, 158, 166–68; in Lu Xun, 166–68; “Silent China” (“Wusheng de zhongguo” 無聲的中國). See also explosion as metaphor stages of history (zhang sanshi 張三世): Chen Duxiu, 38; Xiong Shili, 92. See also tianxia: three-stage history state, concept of: Axial Age, 3; Confucianist, 7; early dynasties, 1–3; “Great Harmony” (大同) in, 9; Han, 8–10; and ideological change, 3; legend of Xi Bo 西伯, 6; in Liji 禮記 (Book of rites), 9; “Minor Tranquility,” 9, 10; Qin, 7, 8; sage-king paradigm, 9. See also bone oracles; Confucius; Dong Zhongshu, Duke Huan of Qi; Fajia (Legalist) school; Guan Zhong; Guanzi; Laozi; “Mandate of Heaven”; Mengzi; sage-king paradigm; tianxia; Xunzi “structure of feeling,” 54 Sun Yat-sen, 74; and Wang Jingwei, 333 Sunflower Student Movement in Taiwan (2014), 188, 196; comparisons with Umbrella Movement, 188–89, 208 “superfluous man” (Turgenev or Goncharov), 125, 143. See also “obsolete man”; “utopian man” synaesthesia in modern Chinese literature. See sound as a metaphor in modern Chinese literature Tai, Benny, 197 allegorical concerns, 191–92; on civil disobedience, 197; Tan Sitong, 74; and Umbrella Movement, 198 Tan Sitong, 74, 76 Tao Yuanming 陶淵明. See Peach Blossom Spring temporality: bodily time-travel, 151; emancipatory political, 99; historical, and desire, 119–20; in Mao’s theory of contradiction, 104; in Wang Fuzhi’s Theory of Ages in the
232 Index Spring and Autumn Annals, 92; psychological, 120; and utopian bodies, 150. See also Empress Fuyao three ages: see Santi three ages, interpretation: see Hu Musheng Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, 198 three-body problem: 86n42. See also Liu Cixin; Santi three stages of history, 28; use by Kang Youwei, 28–29 three orthodoxies, unification of (tongsantong 通三統), 59 three ways to immortality in Confucianism, 77 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, 187; significance in Hong Kong, 189, 196, 207. See “Tiananmen complex” “Tiananmen complex,” 174 tianming 天命 (Mandate of Heaven): “Dafeng Gui” 大豐簋 vessel, 2; Wang Xiaodong on, 21 Tianxia Guiyuan (internet author), works, 148–58; Empress Fuyao: see Empress Fuyao Tianxia System (Sinocentrism). See Zhao Tingyang tianxia zhixu 天下秩序 (politicized world order), 15, 25. See also He Xiu; Sinocentric world system tianxia zhuyi 天下主義 (conceptualized Sinocentrism), 15; as a Confucian concept, 16; nationalist appropriation, 21; transformation of meaning after 1996, 20–21 tianxia 天下 (“all under Heaven” or “Chinese world order”): ancient definition, 18; ancient texts on, 17–18; distinction between hua and yi, 16–17; “harbinger of a perfect world system,” 19; historical concept, 3–4, 5, 7, 16–19; Gongyang School interpretations, 25–27; He Xiu’s change from disunity (buyi 不一) to unity (ruoyi 若一), 26; idealism in, 17; influence on history, 19–20; juxtaposition with empire, 23; perpetuating concept of Chinese world order, 19, 23–24; post-socialist concept, 16; sources, 25; three-stage history, 32. See also Gongyang School, Zhao Tingyang time-travel fiction. See internet time-travel fiction; utopian bodies Tongmenhui (Chinese United League), 74; membership, 75 totalism, 38n6. See also Chen Duxiu, Lin, Yü-sheng tourism in Hong Kong, surge, 206 translations, Chinese: of Western-language books, 22
tributary system (chaogong tixi) of China, 17, 18, 59 True Story of Ah Q, 109–10. See also Wang Hui “Turmoil” (Dongluan 動亂). See Liu Yichang Umbrella Movement (2014), 183; activists, 201–2; Beijing’s agenda, 201; catalysts, 196–98; causes, 203–4, 205; characterizations, 204; ending the protests, 199–200; impact on attitudes to Basic Law, 208; influence of identity, 207, 209; in The Midnight After, 187; legalistic strategy of resistance, 198, 205; phases of development, 199; polls, 202–3; public similarities to Tiananmen protest (1989), 196; strength, 184; symbol of umbrella, 192–93; utopian dimensions, 209. See also Law Wing-sang; Occupy Central; Scholarism unadorned king concept: See under Dong Zhongshu; Xiong Shili Unexpected Island, The, 138–44; “art of better living,” 141; comparison with Importance of Living, 142; comparisons with Zhou Zuoren, 141; concept of havens, 140; future-past perspective, 139; goals, 197; influence of Greek culture, 140–42; modern social ills, 139–40; “nowhere” setting, 139; spiritual poverty, 140; summary, 138–39; influence of Greek and Chinese culture in, 140; “uselessness,” 144; as a utopia, 140; utopia as ‘naturalization of humans,” 141, 142. See also Zhou Zuoren, Zhuangzi universal cosmopolitanism, 94 “useless persons,” 124, 143; nineteenthcentury European concept, 125, 143. See also “obsolete man”; “superfluous man”; “utopian man” utopia: anticipatory; as an act of social imagination, 84; as anticipatory nostalgia, 63; conservative, 85; content, 84–86; definition and etymology, 83–84; equation with ideology, 84; etymology, 216–17; etymology in Chinese, 55; in contemporary Chinese narrative literature, 54; Kojevian universal homogenous, 108; linguistic construction, 165–66; Mannheim’s typology, 85; redemptive: see Wang Hui: redemptive utopia; relationship with dystopia, 65, 83. See also dystopia; heterotopia; “minor utopias”; Zhuangzi utopia and dystopia: blurred genre boundaries, 64; interrelationship, vii utopia, dystopia, heterotopia compared, 65– 68
Index 233 utopia, forms of: anticipatory versus redemptive, 99, 111; conservative, 85; realistic, 99; redemptive, 109 (see also Ah Q); revolutionary form in postrevolutionary China, 112; temporal: blind spot in, 160. See also “utopia of the human” utopia of the human: Emmanuel Levinas, 118n2; in Peach Blossom Beauty, 119–20 utopian bodies, 148; power, 150 utopian discourse in China: late-Qing versus postsocialist, 59–60 utopian humanism, 117–27 utopian impulse, 37, 107 utopian liberalism. See Hu Shi: utopian liberalism utopian literature: internet as new genre, 154–55; novels, 56–, 216–17; Qing era, 130. See also Empress Fuyao “utopian man,” 123–26, 143–44. See also Duanwu; Jiangnan Trilogy; “obsolete man”; “superfluous man” utopian moments, 36; cosmopolitan potential in, 88–97; major versus minor, 38n5; minor utopias, 38 utopian schemes, 37; science and technology in, 96 utopian socialism, 84 utopianism: definition, 37, 53–54n2; Marxist, 100, 112; in postrevolutionary China, 99–; radical Verni, Paolo, 213 Voltaire, 60 wandering scholars (youshi 遊士), 73–74; characteristics, 80; in revolutions, 73; Tongmenhui as, 74. See also elite intellectuals Wang Hui (汪暉), 59; Ah Q, 109–10; “antimodern theory of moderniztin; idcritique of capitalist modernity, 107–8; China’s Rise: Experience and Challenges (2009); critique of Li Zehou, 106–7; on “depoliticized politics, “ 109; “self-corrective system” in Chinese state, 61; “The Identity of Attitude in the May Fourth Enlightenment,” 106–7; impact of neo, liberalist thought, intellectual rebellion, 106–10; influence of Lu Xun, 100; interpretation of Lu Xun, 106; on influence of Maoist thinking, 106, 107–8; possibility of positive revolution, 109; redemptive utopia, 100, 106, 109; resurrection of tributary system (chaogong tixi 朝貢體系); Six Moments in Ah Q’s Life, 109; using
neoliberal means to actualize utopia today, 110; utopian vision and political legitimacy, 111 Wang Jingwei, 73: collaboration as selfsacrifice, 79; early years, 74–75; essays, 77–78; and Hu Hanmin, 76; Hu Shi on, 80; immaturity as politician, 78; innate knowing (minzhi 良知), 76; Kuomintang career, 78–79; name, 80; peace policy with Japan, 79; political ethics; 79–80; possible nihilism, 77; self-sacrifice, notions of, 76–77, 78, 80; to Sun Yat-sen, 75–76; three ways to immortality, 77; on utopia, 107. See also Li Zhiyu: on Wang Jingwei; self: “small” versus “greater” Wang Xiaodong on Mandate of Heaven. See tianming: Wang Xiaodong on Wang Yangming, 76; use of “great man” concept, 89. See Xiong Shili wangba 王霸 (the kingly and hegemonic way) concept, 59 Way, Daoist. See dao We (novel, 1924). See Zamyatin, Yevgeny Weber, Max: form of cognizance vis à vis social movements, 215; politician’s three preeminent qualities, 78. See also “dark consciousness”: origins in Weber’s original sin Wei Yuan, 27, 30 West, Chinese critiques of the, 22 Winter, Jay. See utopian moments Wong Bik-wan 黃碧雲 (storywriter): “Lost City” 失城 (“Shicheng”), 174; “Lust” 好欲 (“Haoyu”), 174 Wong, Joshua, 198; hunger strike, 199; New York Times editorial, 206. See also Umbrella Movement Wu Jianren: comparisons with Liang Qichao, 57–58; Xin Shitouji (The new story of the stone), 56–58 Wu Yue, 74, 76 Wu Zhihui, 78. See also Society for the Promotion of Morality Wutuobang 烏托邦 (utopia): see Ge Fei; utopia; Wutuobang sanbuqu; Yan Fu Wutuobang sanbuqu (Trilogy of utopia). See under Ge Fei Xi Jinping. See “Chinese Dream” Xinmin congbao (New people’s review), 75 Xiong Shili: analysis of discourse, 87–97; comparison with Kang Youwei, 95; Confucian cosmopolitanism, 91; on democracy, 91, 95, 96, 97; doctrine of outer kingliness, 89; inner sageliness, 88,
234 Index 89; “Inquiry on Outer Kingliness,” 95; interpretation of three ages, 91–92, 94; necessity for war in utopian vision, 93; outer kingliness, 83; reinterpretations of hexagrams from Yijing, 93; unadorned king concept, 89–90; use of Wang Yangming, 89; works: see Essentials for Reading the Canonical Classics; Evolution of the Cosmos; Inquiry into Confucianism; A New Treatise on Consciousness-Only; On Six Canonical Classics; utopian cosmopolitanism, 83. See also “barbarian,” Chinese concept of: Xiong Shili’s reconceptualization unadorned king concept Xu Chi 徐遲, 168; poems, 169–70; poetry as political engagement, 171. See also Dai Wangshu, Eileen Chang Xu Jin 徐進, 59. See also literature of persuasion; wangba concept Xu Xing, egalitarian vision, 43 Xunzi 荀子, 6, 18; concept of fuqiang 富強, 6–7; human susceptibility to evil, 62; ideal social order, 6–7; interpretation of tianxi, 18 Yan Fu 嚴復: instrumentality of literature in changing China, 55–56; translation of Evolution and Ethics (Huxley), 55; translation of word utopia, 55n6. See also Huxley, Thomas Yan Lianke, Lenin’s Kisses (Shouhuo 受活), 129, 143. See dystopian novels, Chinese Yan Xuetong 閻學通, 59. See also literature of persuasion; wangba concept Yao Zhongqiu: on the “Chinese moment,” 21 Zamyatin, Yevgeny, on high-tech dystopia, 217 Zhuang Cunyu, 26–27; Gongyang School, 31, 32; influence on Kang Youwei, 30, 32; and New Text Confucians, 31 32. See also Liang Qichao; Liu Fenglu; New Text Confucians Zhang Ning 張檸, “mechanism of readerbased selection”; on utopia-dystopia dichotomy, 217 Zhang Taiyan, changed meaning of revolution, 74; equality: concept, 137; criticism, 137. See also Zhou Zuoren Zhang Xiaoxiang 張孝祥, “On Cruising Dongting Lake” (poem): allusion to moon as figure of alterity, 194 Zhang Xudong 張旭東. See “Chinese Dream”: Panglossian interpretation
Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽: basis of tianxia tixi (Sinocentric system) concept, 19–20, 59; book, Tianxia System (Sinocentrism), 19; juxtaposing tianxia and empire, 22, 23; problem of the ruler (da jiazhang), 24; unresolved questions, 24. See also tianxia Zhou Zuoren, 134–38; comparison with Lin Yutang, 141; concept of tolerance, 136–38; criticism, 135–; humanism, 134, 135; influence of Greek culture on, 141; “new village” movement, 134–; propagation of “new village” concept, 135–36; influence of Zhuangzi, 136–37; tolerance and difference in the arts, 137–38. See also Zhuangzi Zhuang Yinde 張寅德, 143–44. See also “obsolete man”; “utopian man” Zhuangzi, 124n19; absolute spiritual freedom (“not being enslaved by things”) and Berlin’s negative freedom compared, 129–34; as a critique of modern utopian imagination, 133–34; Benjamin Schwartz on moral judgment, 133–34; influence on critics of utopianism, 134–38; limitations imposed by modern authoritarianism in modern Chinese literature, 132, 133; Liu Xiaogan on, 131–32; metaphor of the deformed or disabled, 143; on freedom, 131, 132, 142, 144; relevance to modern times, 132. See also Zhou Zuoren Zhuangzi. See Zhuangzi Žižek, Slavoj: criticism of, 213; “sublime hysteric,” 68; the possibility of change, 213, 218; transgressive “acts,” 213; “they know, but they still do not act,” 218