Postcoloniality and History

This essay explores the implications of postcolonial writing for our understanding of the practice of history. It outlines the central principles of contemporary postcolonial inquiry, and provides a critique of recent trends in the field. With its pre-occupation with the local and the particular, contemporary postcolonial writing has become detached from the critical frameworks of analysis embodied in the initial phase of postcolonial writing.Quels impacts les écrits postcoloniaux ont-ils eu sur notre compréhension de la pratique de l’histoire ? Arif Dirlik avance ici une réponse en montrant sur quels principes fondamentaux repose la recherche contemporaine postcoloniale et en présentant une étude critique des dernières tendances dans le domaine. Parce qu’ils ont centré leur intérêt sur le régional et le particulier, les écrits contemporains postcoloniaux se sont écartés des cadres d’analyse critique qui avaient marqué les débuts de l’écriture postcoloniale

Colonialism, Revolution, Development : A Historical Perspective on Citizenship in Political Struggles in Eastern Asia

Intensified blending of populations through migrations, and the problem of citizenship in different national contexts, in recent years have foregrounded questions of culture and cultural difference in citizenship studies. These questions have been compounded by a pervasive supicion of a universalistic understanding of citizenship for its possible Eurocentric implications. Citizenship studies in Eastern Asia partake of this general problematic of culture. The complication of citizenship through recognition of its cultural dimension is a salutary development, but one that also presents a new predicament: loss of coherence of the concept, as well as a bias to culturalism that disguises the radical challenge the idea of citizenship has presented to inherited notions of political belonging, most importantly, the remaking of subjects into citizens that has accompanied the globalization of the nation-form from the late 19th century. Struggles for citizenship also bear upon questions of democracy and human rights, which also disappear from sight in culturalist readings. This is the problem that is addressed in the essay. I argue that the preoccupation with culture, if unchecked, threatens to erase a century long history of struggles for citizenship, democracy and human rights in Eastern Asian societies. Discussions of citizenship need to be sensitive to these struggles which are still very much issues of Eastern Asian politics

: Zwischen Welten Denken: Diskussionsrehe - Arif Dirlik in Gespräch mit Gregory Lee

Gregory Lee "Initial Remarks", in part amended by hand 5 June 2001. Amendments added to the original document 28 August 2019.International audienceSee PDF document in German at https://gregorybarrylee.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/4/7/11477410/berlin_lee_dirlik.pd

The Mouse That Roared: The Democratic Movement in Hong Kong

The popular uprising in recent years in Hong Kong – “Occupy Central” a.k.a. Umbrella Movement – has again brought to the fore the question of the Special Administrative Region’s relationship with Mainland China post-1997 “handover” of the territory by the British colonial government to the People’s Republic of China. This article argues that the protests have their origins in a consciousness born of the anxieties provoked by the prospect of unification in the 1980s and 1990s, further evolved against the background of the unstable “one country, two systems” arrangement openly favoring the corporate and financial ruling class in Hong Kong which is in turn prepared to align its interests with those of the Communist regime in a mutually beneficial relationship. It also posits while the upheaval in Hong Kong bears similarities to other “Occupy” movements elsewhere in the economic issues that inform it, it may be viewed as the latest chapter in a narrative that goes back to the 1980s – the emergence of a neoliberal global capitalism of which the PRC has been an integral component, and the Tiananmen movement which was one of the earliest expressions of the social and political strains created by shifts in the global economy

Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth-Century China

This essay inquires into the relationship between theory, culture and history as it appears from a perspective at the end of the twentieth century. The substance of the essay consists of analyses two attempts to sinicize theory: the Maoist effort of the Yan an Period to make Marxism Chinese, and an effort by Chinese sociologists in the early eighties to make sociology Chinese. On this basis, the essay argues that the effort to confront theory by culture is by no means transparent, but has different meanings at different times. Such efforts may produce new theories, but any such production is likely to be quite ambivalent in its confrontation with culture, such changes are likely to qualify received theory but preserve it as the foundation for its modifications. Secondly, where culture acquires a strong voice in theory, the result is likely to be the disintegration of theory rather than its enrichment, or the broadening of its scope. This would seem to be the situation at the end of the century as evidence accumulates of the disintegration of received theories, which is articulated in postmodern/postcolonial questionings not only of theory and culture but of history as well. An idea such as the sinicization of theory may no longer be relevant, the essay suggests, both because it is increasingly difficult to speak of a "Chinese" culture in the face of a proliferation of Chinese societies with different historical trajectories, but also because such an idea is parochial in ignoring other cultural traditions making their claims on theory. History itself has been challenged in recent years as a particularly modern Western way of knowing the past. The essay concludes nevertheless that there is much to be gained from viewing theory, culture, and the interactions between the two, historically

Mao Zedong in ContemporaryChinese Official Discourse andHistory

Rather than repudiate Mao’s legacy, the post-revolutionary regime in China has sought to recruit him in support of “reform and opening.” Beginning with Deng Xiaoping after 1978, official (2) historiography has drawn a distinction between Mao the Cultural Revolutionary and Mao the architect of “Chinese Marxism” – a Marxism that integrates theory with the circumstances of Chinese society. The essence of the latter is encapsulated in “Mao Zedong Thought,” which is viewed as an expression not just of Mao the individual but of the collective leadership of the Party. In most recent representations, “Chinese Marxism” is viewed as having developed in two phases: New Democracy, which brought the Communist Party to power in 1949, and “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” inaugurated under Deng Xiaoping and developed under his successors, and which represents a further development of Mao Zedong Thought. The Hu Jintao leadership has made an aggressive effort to portray “Chinese Marxism” as the most advanced development of Marxism that might also serve as a model for others. These interpretive operations have salvaged Mao for the national revolution and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. But it also presents a predicament in keeping alive memories of Mao’s policies, which the Party is not always able to control in political memory, as has been illustrated most recently in the Chongqing experiment