Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity

Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity

Author: Xiaobing Tang

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1996-04

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0804725837

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book reexamines the historical thinking of Liang Qichao (1873-1929), one of the few modern Chinese thinkers and cultural critics whose appreciation of the question of modernity was based on first-hand experience of the world space in which China had to function as a nation-state. It seeks to demonstrate that Liang was not only a profoundly paradigmatic modern Chinese intellectual but also an imaginative thinker of worldwide significance. By tracing the changes in Liang's conception of history, the author shows that global space inspired both Liang's longing for modernity and his critical reconceptualization of modern history. Spatiality, or the mode of determining spatial organization and relationships, offers a new interpretive category for understanding the stages in Liang's historical thinking. Liang's historical thinking culminated in a global imaginary of difference, which became most evident in the shift from his earlier proposal for a uniform national history to one that mapped "cultural history." His reaffirmation of spatiality, a critical concept overshadowed by the modernist obsession with time and history, made it both necessary and possible for him to redesign the project of modernity. Finally, the author suggests that the reconciliation of anthropological space with historical time that Liang achieved makes him abundantly contemporary with our own time, both inextricably modern and postmodern.


Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity

Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity

Author: Xiaobing Tang

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 1996-04-01

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0804764743

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book reexamines the historical thinking of Liang Qichao (1873-1929), one of the few modern Chinese thinkers and cultural critics whose appreciation of the question of modernity was based on first-hand experience of the world space in which China had to function as a nation-state. It seeks to demonstrate that Liang was not only a profoundly paradigmatic modern Chinese intellectual but also an imaginative thinker of worldwide significance. By tracing the changes in Liang's conception of history, the author shows that global space inspired both Liang's longing for modernity and his critical reconceptualization of modern history. Spatiality, or the mode of determining spatial organization and relationships, offers a new interpretive category for understanding the stages in Liang's historical thinking. Liang's historical thinking culminated in a global imaginary of difference, which became most evident in the shift from his earlier proposal for a uniform national history to one that mapped "cultural history." His reaffirmation of spatiality, a critical concept overshadowed by the modernist obsession with time and history, made it both necessary and possible for him to redesign the project of modernity. Finally, the author suggests that the reconciliation of anthropological space with historical time that Liang achieved makes him abundantly contemporary with our own time, both inextricably modern and postmodern.


Nation and the Writing of History in China and Britain, 1880–1930

Nation and the Writing of History in China and Britain, 1880–1930

Author: Asier Hernández Aguirresarobe

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-19

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1000643131

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nation and the Writing of History in China and Britain explores, through a comparative approach, the reception of the nationalist worldview and its effects on the practice of history in China and Britain. This book proposes that nationalism, rather than a political doctrine, is a way of making sense of the world which results from the combination of a set of definite assumptions. The work analyzes how each one of these premises was accepted and negotiated by literati, intellectuals, historians, and other scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The results of this research showcase how the reception of the new nationalist worldview crucially affected images of the past, the present, and the future in both societies and decisively framed cultural, social, and political debate. In addition, they likewise evidence the fundamental role that historical narratives play in the crystallization of national identities. This book is perfect for readers interested in China and Britain during this time period, but also to anyone attracted to new ways of conceiving nationalism and its role in our world.


Liberal Cosmopolitan

Liberal Cosmopolitan

Author: Qian Suoqiao

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 9004192131

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a cross-cultural critique on the problem of the liberal cosmopolitan in modern Chinese intellectuality in light of Lin Yutang’s literary and cultural practices across China and America. It points to the desirability of a middling Chinese modernity.


Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China

Author: Xiaoqun Xu

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2014-05-23

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0739189158

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China analyzes important aspects of Chinese intellectual life and cultural practices that formed and informed the historical phenomenon known as the New Culture era. Through examining an influential newspaper supplement published in Beijing during 1918–1928, along with other contemporary sources, the book explores the full dimensions and rich textures of the intellectual-literary discourses of the time period and contributes to a re-consideration and re-appreciation of the New Culture phenomenon in modern China. It highlights a key intellectual-moral paradox in Chinese discourses between cosmopolitanism as an idealistic aspiration and nationalism as a practical imperative, both in complex relationship to individualism, a paradox that ultimately speaks to the constant negotiations between Chinese tradition and Western culture in the making of Chinese modernity. These issues have remained vitally relevant to China and the world nearly a century later.


The Invention of China

The Invention of China

Author: Bill Hayton

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 030025606X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A provocative account showing that “China”—and its 5,000 years of unified history—is a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day China’s current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but “China” as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals. In this compelling account, Hayton shows how China’s present-day geopolitical problems—the fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea—were born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to “invent’ a new vision of China. By asserting a particular, politicized version of the past the government bolstered its claim to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to Central Asia. Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how the Republic’s reworking of its past not only helped it to justify its right to rule a century ago—but continues to motivate and direct policy today.


The Ambivalence of Identity

The Ambivalence of Identity

Author: Peter Thaler

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9781557532015

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Ambivalence of Identity examines nation-building in Austria and uses the Austrian experience to explore the conceptual foundations of nationhood. Traditionally, Hapsburg, Austria, has provided the background for these works. In the course of this study it should become clear that Republican Austria is as valuable in understanding national identity as its monarchic predecessor. Historical interpretations to Austrian nation-building gives the Austrian experience special relevance for the larger debate about the nature of history. Such aspects in the analysis of the post-war Austrian nation-building are the role of consciousness during the building process, the role of neighboring countries, and the role of World War II.


World History and National Identity in China

World History and National Identity in China

Author: Xin Fan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-02-25

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1108842607

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focuses on individual lived experiences to trace the development of world-historical studies in China's long twentieth century.


A Global History of Modern Historiography

A Global History of Modern Historiography

Author: Georg G Iggers

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1134856407

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first book on historiography to adopt a global and comparative perspective on the topic, A Global History of Modern Historiography looks not just at developments in the West but also at the other great historiographical traditions in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere around the world over the course of the past two and a half centuries. This second edition contains fully updated sections on Latin American and African historiography, discussion of the development of global history, environmental history, and feminist and gender history in recent years, and new coverage of Russian historical practices. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the authors analyse historical currents in a changing political, social and cultural context, examining both the adaptation and modification of the Western influence on historiography and how societies outside Europe and America found their own ways in the face of modernization and globalization. Supported by online resources including a selection of excerpts from key historiographical texts, this book offers an up-to-date account of the status of historical writing in the global era and is essential reading for all students of modern historiography.


Culture & History of Postrevolutionary China

Culture & History of Postrevolutionary China

Author: Arif Dirlik

Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

Published: 2011-11-24

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9629964740

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The essays in this volume grew from a series of talks delivered in late 2010 as the Liang Qichao Memorial Lectures at the Academy of National Learning (Guoxue yuan) of Tsinghua University, Beijing. Offering critical perspectives on a number of ideological issues that have figured prominently in Chinese intellectual discourse since the beginning of the socalled "reform and opening" (gaige kaifang) in the late 1970s, these essays range widely in subject matter, from Marxist historiography to sociology and anthropology in China to guoxue/national studies. Together they are conceived as different windows into a basic problem: the deployment of culture and history in postrevolutionary Chinese thought. Dirlik touches on a number of themes, including the repudiation of the revolutionary past after 1978, which has led to a rise of cultural nationalism. He further places these developments within a global context, ultimately making a case methodologically for "worlding' China: bringing China into the world, and the world into China.