1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,570 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture 2 00:00:03,570 --> 00:00:07,919 Series under the Cornell East Asia Program. The arguments and viewpoints of 3 00:00:07,919 --> 00:00:13,610 this talk belong solely to the speaker. We hope you enjoy. So for this evening 4 00:00:13,610 --> 00:00:19,550 for the final talk of the semester we're very happy to have Professor Shu-mei Shih who is with us from 5 00:00:19,550 --> 00:00:26,849 UCLA where she has been teaching since finishing her PhD there in Comparative 6 00:00:26,849 --> 00:00:32,430 Literature in 1992. She has a dual appointment in Department of Asian 7 00:00:32,430 --> 00:00:40,350 Languages and Cultures and in Comparative Literature. She has also spent recently much time in 8 00:00:40,350 --> 00:00:47,789 Hong Kong where she is the endowed chair of Chinese at University of Hong Kong since 2013 and 9 00:00:47,789 --> 00:00:54,120 also a fellow at the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities since 2014. She has a 10 00:00:54,120 --> 00:01:00,989 long list of impressive publications which all more or less contributes to 11 00:01:00,989 --> 00:01:07,260 really to defining a new field, sort of an emerging field, of Sinophone Studies 12 00:01:07,260 --> 00:01:14,450 which we will hear something about tonight I think as well as making major 13 00:01:14,450 --> 00:01:21,270 interventions in global humanities and theoretical conversations about the 14 00:01:21,270 --> 00:01:27,119 humanities. Some of her recent works include co-edited The Creolization of 15 00:01:27,119 --> 00:01:35,400 Theory 2014, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone articulations across the Pacific in 2007 16 00:01:35,400 --> 00:01:48,930 - it's been quite influential - and the list goes on and on but we'd rather hear her in a minute so please join me in welcoming Professor Shih Shu-mei. Thank you Professor Robyn 17 00:01:48,930 --> 00:01:53,939 McNeal for that wonderful introduction and also to you 18 00:01:53,939 --> 00:01:59,340 and to Professor Brett de Bary for the invitation. It's my first time at Cornell 19 00:01:59,340 --> 00:02:06,210 and it's really a great pleasure to be here so the piece I'm presenting today 20 00:02:06,210 --> 00:02:12,640 is drawn from the book I'm hoping to complete soon - "Empires of the Sinophone" - 21 00:02:12,640 --> 00:02:18,520 and it is an intervention into two fields, mainly Post-colonial Studies and 22 00:02:18,520 --> 00:02:23,650 Chinese Studies and as you can glean from the title of my talk today right 23 00:02:23,650 --> 00:02:27,099 comparative post-colonial theory which is you know looking at Post-colonial 24 00:02:27,099 --> 00:02:31,200 Studies and the question of Chinese Empire is a critique of Chinese Studies or 25 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:35,800 engagement with Chinese Studies comparative post-colonial theory points 26 00:02:35,800 --> 00:02:38,620 to the necessity of broadening the post-colonial critique from the 27 00:02:38,620 --> 00:02:43,750 privileged sites of Anglophone and Francophone Studies or Anglo-Franco 28 00:02:43,750 --> 00:02:48,459 focus as some would say and the question of Chinese Empire is an invitation to 29 00:02:48,459 --> 00:02:53,230 consider a post-colonial critique based on Chinese Empire in its intersection 30 00:02:53,230 --> 00:02:58,599 with other empires that is a proposal for an inter-imperial approach to 31 00:02:58,599 --> 00:03:03,040 Post-colonial Studies. The two interventions intersect in the field 32 00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:07,660 that I have been calling Sinophone Studies where further intersectionality 33 00:03:07,660 --> 00:03:15,220 was built in with Ethnic Studies and Diaspora Studies. From my since since 34 00:03:15,220 --> 00:03:19,560 Sinophone communities or ethnic minority communities, you know, oftentimes 35 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:25,120 that are scattered around the world. From my talk today you will be able to glean 36 00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:28,900 how Post-colonial Studies, Chinese Studies, Ethnic Studies and Diaspora 37 00:03:28,900 --> 00:03:34,180 Studies intersect within Sinophone Studies as well as, I would draw from these 38 00:03:34,180 --> 00:03:39,160 fields and simultaneously putting pressure on them. As you know I'm not a 39 00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:44,350 so called specialist, or expert of Southeast Asia but I'll be talking a bit 40 00:03:44,350 --> 00:03:51,280 about Southeast Asia today and Southeast Asia will be in some way as a 41 00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:55,750 point of departure for me today but it will be seen as not only as a geographical 42 00:03:55,750 --> 00:04:01,810 category but also as a political category and a theoretical 43 00:04:01,810 --> 00:04:08,200 category. Just as a footnote on Southeast Asia I'm thinking about Southeast Asia here 44 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:15,190 to include Taiwan and Hong Kong which is completely unorthodox for two 45 00:04:15,190 --> 00:04:20,470 reasons: I contend that Maritime Southeast Asia including Brunei, East 46 00:04:20,470 --> 00:04:25,360 Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore must include Taiwan if only 47 00:04:25,360 --> 00:04:29,500 because the indigenous peoples of Taiwan the seafaring austronesians are 48 00:04:29,500 --> 00:04:35,530 genetically linked to the majority populations in Malaysia, Philippines and 49 00:04:35,530 --> 00:04:39,970 Indonesia and they have predominated in the history of Maritime Southeast Asia. 50 00:04:39,970 --> 00:04:44,650 In Imperial Chinese records for it furthermore the notion of Nanyang the 51 00:04:44,650 --> 00:04:50,170 South Seas which is generally equivalent to today's Southeast Asia included 52 00:04:50,170 --> 00:04:55,630 Taiwan and Hong Kong since and we can look at the work of late 19th century 53 00:04:55,630 --> 00:05:03,280 Chinese scholar Zheng Guanying who wrote a book called "盛世危言" (shèngshì wēiyán) 54 00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:08,950 - "Advices during Prosperous Times" - for the definition of Nanyang or the South Seas which included 55 00:05:08,950 --> 00:05:15,090 Taiwan and Hong Kong and if you also look at new world encyclopedia entry on 56 00:05:15,090 --> 00:05:19,750 Southeast Asia, Taiwan is also often considered part of Southeast Asia so 57 00:05:19,750 --> 00:05:25,960 this is an unorthodox, ok, cartography of Southeast Asia that I'm addressing today. 58 00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:35,230 Vis-a-vis that I actually had a caveat which I usually kind of announce at the 59 00:05:35,230 --> 00:05:41,170 beginning of my classes in Sinophone Studies which is that I tell my students 60 00:05:41,170 --> 00:05:46,270 please check your nationalism at the door like you check your backpack when 61 00:05:46,270 --> 00:05:55,690 you go to the museum right so there's gonna be enough, enough affect produced 62 00:05:55,690 --> 00:06:02,800 by any kind of nationalism to go around any room and so I am asking you for your 63 00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:08,200 patience and to take care of nationalism at the door for the following 64 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:17,830 lecture. My hope is that Ackbar Abbas's notion of point of departure - this 65 00:06:17,830 --> 00:06:24,220 category - would have the potential for what he calls centrifugal radiation for 66 00:06:24,220 --> 00:06:29,950 rethinking post-colonial theory. So for for Ackbar the idea of the point of 67 00:06:29,950 --> 00:06:33,540 departure is that when you're looking reading a novel how do you find out 68 00:06:33,540 --> 00:06:38,220 how to enter into a novel and discuss it and he presents this notion of point of 69 00:06:38,220 --> 00:06:41,700 departure which could be an image, which could be a scene, which could be a 70 00:06:41,700 --> 00:06:48,120 character and through which, through engaging with this one image or 71 00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:54,150 a scene, actually from there all the meaning generates and you're able to 72 00:06:54,150 --> 00:06:59,190 encompass a discussion of the whole novel and he calls it the kind of 73 00:06:59,190 --> 00:07:04,430 centrifugal radiation and so perhaps you know the Sinophone and Southeast Asia 74 00:07:04,430 --> 00:07:10,110 especially in this context could be I'm hoping that it would serve as a kind of 75 00:07:10,110 --> 00:07:17,820 point of departure. In Marguerite Duras's novel "The lover", the namesake lover lived 76 00:07:17,820 --> 00:07:23,490 in an area of Saigon called Cho Lon. Cho Lon was a city built by the Hua or Chinese 77 00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:28,260 Vietnamese people in the 18th century and later was incorporated into Saigon 78 00:07:28,260 --> 00:07:32,580 by the French Colonial Government. It is the largest Chinatown in the world by 79 00:07:32,580 --> 00:07:38,310 size now a part of Ho Chi Minh City. This is where I visited in the spring of 2015 80 00:07:38,310 --> 00:07:44,100 searching for local publications in the sinitic script or Chinese. In the 81 00:07:44,100 --> 00:07:48,390 bookstores along busy and dusty boulevards and I found scores of story 82 00:07:48,390 --> 00:07:53,760 collections, poetry checkbox, and literary journals as vibrant examples of 83 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:57,570 contemporary Sinophone Vietnamese literature. If we were to 84 00:07:57,570 --> 00:08:02,970 study Duras's "China Lover" from Sinophone perspective, one assumed, the 85 00:08:02,970 --> 00:08:07,650 assumed main narrative of the poor fifteen-year-old French girl who 86 00:08:07,650 --> 00:08:12,120 acquires a kind of sexual autonomy therein her relationship with the rich Chinese man 87 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:17,160 would have to be seriously interjected and intersected with a history of the 88 00:08:17,160 --> 00:08:21,660 Chinese Vietnamese people, bringing to life the largely silent lover in the 89 00:08:21,660 --> 00:08:28,680 novel, not least because of course in the movie the Chinese lover was played by 90 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:35,849 the amazing Tony Leung from Hong Kong. He was Vietnamese Chinese, not Chinese. 91 00:08:35,849 --> 00:08:40,919 He's Chinese Vietnamese, sorry, not Chinese. His history was part 92 00:08:40,919 --> 00:08:45,960 of Vietnamese history and if this were part of Chinese history it would have to 93 00:08:45,960 --> 00:08:49,180 be a very inflected one. As another area of studies, 94 00:08:49,180 --> 00:08:52,520 Sinophone Vietnam will be quite different from Francophone Vietnam 95 00:08:52,530 --> 00:08:57,720 in focus even though they existed simultaneously. Or try the northern 96 00:08:57,720 --> 00:09:02,070 Vietnamese city of Hanoi, much farther north where the French had its capital 97 00:09:02,070 --> 00:09:07,880 for most of the 20th century hence much closer to China where I also visited. 98 00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:12,570 Here the distance between the Temple of Literature to the Upper House is only 99 00:09:12,570 --> 00:09:17,940 2.5 kilometres, that takes approximately 30 minutes by foot. the Temple of 100 00:09:17,940 --> 00:09:22,890 Literature which is a misnomer for what in actuality is a Confucius Temple called 101 00:09:22,890 --> 00:09:28,350 Imperial Academy and is modeled after similar Confucius temples in China, was 102 00:09:28,350 --> 00:09:32,000 built in the year 1070 where the Hanoi Opera House 103 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:38,500 modeled on the Opera House Palais Garnier in Paris was erected in the early 20th century. 104 00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:45,540 These two landmarks belied the inter imperial history of Vietnam where Chinese colonialism from 105 00:09:45,540 --> 00:09:54,450 111 BC almost continuously to 938 AD and French colonialism 1887 to 1945 or 1954 106 00:09:54,450 --> 00:09:58,560 depending on how you do the chronology occur consecutively but their 107 00:09:58,560 --> 00:10:03,420 physical structures now coexist in time and space not merely as remains but as 108 00:10:03,420 --> 00:10:08,600 active an integrated part of life in Hanoi as the tangible and intangible 109 00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:14,880 legacies of the American War i.e Vietnam war. This interim period history Chinese, 110 00:10:14,880 --> 00:10:19,260 French, American has left expected linguistic and literary consequences. 111 00:10:19,260 --> 00:10:24,390 They used the classical sinitic script from China for two millennia in the 112 00:10:24,390 --> 00:10:28,650 repurposed Sinitic characters called the Nom script for about three centuries 113 00:10:28,650 --> 00:10:33,300 until the Latin alphabet was adopted as the sole form of orthography in the 114 00:10:33,300 --> 00:10:37,740 twentieth century while Francophone Vietnamese literary tradition continues 115 00:10:37,740 --> 00:10:42,960 to this day and spatters of English are found in stores, signs 116 00:10:42,960 --> 00:10:47,400 and everyday speech. Within this history is situated the Sinophone community of 117 00:10:47,400 --> 00:10:53,220 Vietnam of which Duras's China Lover was a part consisting of generations of 118 00:10:53,220 --> 00:10:57,830 settlers and immigrants from China who speak several distinct sinitic languages - 119 00:10:57,830 --> 00:11:01,420 Cantonese, Hokkien and Teochew for instance that are not the standard 120 00:11:01,430 --> 00:11:06,400 language of China - Mandarin. In this way the modern Sinophone community is a 121 00:11:06,410 --> 00:11:11,870 minority community within and across empires in Vietnam, activates a dynamic 122 00:11:11,870 --> 00:11:17,810 distinct, a dynamic distinct from the usual colonizer and colonized dyad and 123 00:11:17,810 --> 00:11:22,940 complicates colonial and postcolonial relationality from binarism to multi-angulation. 124 00:11:22,940 --> 00:11:31,279 The confetti of empire is everywhere but it is, even as a metaphor, 125 00:11:31,279 --> 00:11:36,770 of diverse kinds, shapes, colours, of varying densities and mixtures and of 126 00:11:36,770 --> 00:11:41,470 different degrees of heaviness and light. Unlike any other part of the world 127 00:11:41,470 --> 00:11:46,070 Southeast Asia, where the Sinophone has been apart for centuries, has seen 128 00:11:46,070 --> 00:11:50,750 the historical convergence of both European and Asian empires and the 129 00:11:50,750 --> 00:11:55,100 Chinese, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, French, Japanese, Americans 130 00:11:55,100 --> 00:12:00,890 and Russians all came to Southeast Asia where they contended, competed, imitated 131 00:12:00,890 --> 00:12:05,810 and colluded with each other. Unlike the 19th century rush to carve up and 132 00:12:05,810 --> 00:12:10,190 colonize Africa where Western European colonialism lasted for about 70 centuries, 133 00:12:10,190 --> 00:12:17,750 70 years, sorry, imperialism in Southeast Asia with or without formal 134 00:12:17,750 --> 00:12:22,850 colonization occurred over centuries. It is not an exaggeration to say that the 135 00:12:22,850 --> 00:12:27,440 region has been subjected to almost all major waves of imperialism from all 136 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:32,330 around the world and over a long delay. Given this remarkable history Southeast 137 00:12:32,330 --> 00:12:36,920 Asia offers unique sites for the study of imperialism and colonialism in their 138 00:12:36,920 --> 00:12:41,380 aftermath. The extent duration and complexity of such a condition 139 00:12:41,380 --> 00:12:45,470 undoubtedly provides protean possibilities for theorizing the 140 00:12:45,470 --> 00:12:51,200 post-colonial. This however has not been the case - the prevailing model of 141 00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:55,339 post-colonial theory has privileged Western European empires of the 19th 142 00:12:55,339 --> 00:12:59,089 century with an almost complete neglect of Asian empires 143 00:12:59,089 --> 00:13:03,770 especially those of China and Japan. It also appears that in Post-colonial 144 00:13:03,770 --> 00:13:08,660 Studies oceanic empires are preferred over continental empires such as that of 145 00:13:08,660 --> 00:13:13,079 China , perversely echoing Hegel's celebration of 146 00:13:13,079 --> 00:13:17,459 Europe's maritime principle and its love of flux and adventure that needed and 147 00:13:17,459 --> 00:13:23,279 justified outlets overseas. The asiatic according to Hegel was limited by his 148 00:13:23,279 --> 00:13:27,449 landlord status and elects the outlet for life 149 00:13:27,449 --> 00:13:35,279 to step beyond itself because to Asia the sea is of no significance. Even among 150 00:13:35,279 --> 00:13:39,089 Western European colonies there has also been a geographical favoritism that 151 00:13:39,089 --> 00:13:43,589 sanctioned the study of particular colonies over others. South Asia, the 152 00:13:43,589 --> 00:13:48,240 Caribbean and Africa have received most emphasis with some attention paid to 153 00:13:48,240 --> 00:13:52,410 such Commonwealth countries as New Zealand and Australia which were 154 00:13:52,410 --> 00:13:57,120 to my mind mistakenly studied under the post-colonial framework when in fact a 155 00:13:57,120 --> 00:14:00,630 more ethical framework would have been settler colonial studies in due 156 00:14:00,630 --> 00:14:04,500 recognition of the contested sovereignties 157 00:14:04,500 --> 00:14:09,120 by the colonial oppression of indigenous peoples. With rare 158 00:14:09,120 --> 00:14:12,779 exceptions Southeast Asia where both the British and the French established 159 00:14:12,779 --> 00:14:16,410 extensive colonies was largely marginalized in Anglophone and 160 00:14:16,410 --> 00:14:20,939 Francophone post-colonial studies and instead relegated to Area Studies under 161 00:14:20,939 --> 00:14:25,410 the name of Southeast Asian Studies. If one studies Anglophone or Francophone 162 00:14:25,410 --> 00:14:29,850 African or Caribbean the work belongs to Post-colonial Studies. If one studies 163 00:14:29,850 --> 00:14:35,880 any part of Asia except South Asia then the work belongs to Area Studies, even if 164 00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:40,529 this Asia was deeply touched by both the British and the French. This is why to 165 00:14:40,529 --> 00:14:44,790 the post-colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak the Asia beyond South 166 00:14:44,790 --> 00:14:50,339 Asia is ironically called the other Asias as you know that's a title of one of her 167 00:14:50,339 --> 00:14:56,519 books. To whom is the West Asia beyond South Asia the other? Such has been the 168 00:14:56,519 --> 00:15:01,860 particular temporal and spatial fixes of post-colonial theory as we know it in 169 00:15:01,860 --> 00:15:06,750 the disciplinary division of labor. Besides the privileging of specific 170 00:15:06,750 --> 00:15:12,240 former Western European colonies over others, say India over Burma and Malaya, even 171 00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:15,870 though of course Burma was part of British India, the Francophone Caribbean 172 00:15:15,870 --> 00:15:18,630 over Indochina when in fact Indochina was much 173 00:15:18,630 --> 00:15:23,610 larger than all of the Francophone Caribbean islands combined. There has 174 00:15:23,610 --> 00:15:27,959 also been a scholar of Latin America had pointed out the privileging of Western 175 00:15:27,959 --> 00:15:31,850 European empires over Southern European empires from the early modern period. 176 00:15:31,850 --> 00:15:36,809 Latin Americanist have thus usefully made a distinction between what they 177 00:15:36,809 --> 00:15:41,129 call the first colonial modernity - Spanish in Portuguese - and the second 178 00:15:41,129 --> 00:15:45,629 modernity - Western European - and tried to correct the displacement of the former 179 00:15:45,629 --> 00:15:50,189 by the latter. For Southeast Asia the first colonial modernity was also a 180 00:15:50,189 --> 00:15:54,269 crucially formative moment with the arrival of the Dutch, the Spanish, and the 181 00:15:54,269 --> 00:15:58,170 Portuguese. However as Western European empires came and went 182 00:15:58,170 --> 00:16:03,629 their timelines are messier than those of South America. The Dutch 183 00:16:03,629 --> 00:16:07,350 was a nineteenth-century power in the Netherlands East Indies while the 184 00:16:07,350 --> 00:16:10,680 Spanish in the Philippines and the Portuguese in Macau and East Timor 185 00:16:10,680 --> 00:16:15,449 equally spent the periods of first modernity, second modernity and beyond as 186 00:16:15,449 --> 00:16:19,379 we know Hong Kong and Macau were two of the last colonies given up by the 187 00:16:19,379 --> 00:16:26,430 Europeans in 1997 and 1998 respectively. The complex temporal reality of 188 00:16:26,430 --> 00:16:30,750 colonialism and the sheer diversity and multiplicity of imperial colonial 189 00:16:30,750 --> 00:16:36,600 formations is understandably challenging to study, yet the most crucial factor for 190 00:16:36,600 --> 00:16:41,339 the marginalization of this region of the world in post-colonial studies is, I 191 00:16:41,339 --> 00:16:46,379 believe, language. Across the British and French post colonies in South Asia, 192 00:16:46,379 --> 00:16:51,600 Africa and the Caribbean the languages of the colonial masters have for the 193 00:16:51,600 --> 00:16:56,639 large part remained de facto lingua franca whether creolized or not and to 194 00:16:56,639 --> 00:17:00,029 different degrees and whether there continues to exist 195 00:17:00,029 --> 00:17:04,980 numerous other local languages as in the case of South Asia so the linguistic 196 00:17:04,980 --> 00:17:12,419 access is so to speak for you know for the researchers from the West 197 00:17:12,419 --> 00:17:18,360 you know, like, apparently easier if, that is, if you limit your study of Anglo- 198 00:17:18,360 --> 00:17:22,559 South Asia, Anglophone South Asia, not the other languages. One can study global 199 00:17:22,559 --> 00:17:27,270 angle from literature without necessarily knowing any other languages but English 200 00:17:27,270 --> 00:17:31,559 and the same goes for Francophone literature and French. Knowing English 201 00:17:31,559 --> 00:17:36,289 alone however will not give the researcher any reliable access to the ex-British 202 00:17:36,289 --> 00:17:41,210 colonies of Burma and Malaysia where English no longer works so to 203 00:17:41,210 --> 00:17:45,710 speak and strong and vibrant local languages exist and are shared by the 204 00:17:45,710 --> 00:17:50,240 majority of the populations. For most of these countries colonial languages have 205 00:17:50,240 --> 00:17:55,039 largely lost practical relevance by the 21st century except of course the global 206 00:17:55,039 --> 00:18:00,129 now lingua franca of American English. Scholars who study these 207 00:18:00,129 --> 00:18:04,580 postcolonies therefore must do the hard work of learning additional languages other 208 00:18:04,580 --> 00:18:09,470 than English French Dutch or Spanish such as Thai, Bahasa Indonesia Tagalog 209 00:18:09,470 --> 00:18:13,460 Burmese and what have you. The marginalization of 210 00:18:13,460 --> 00:18:17,799 Southeast Asia in post-colonial studies is due to the inertia as well as 211 00:18:17,799 --> 00:18:21,559 indifference of scholars who are not willing to take on the difficult task of 212 00:18:21,559 --> 00:18:26,389 learning languages other than the major Western European languages. Cornell of 213 00:18:26,389 --> 00:18:31,159 course is the storied place where Southeast Asian Studies has been very 214 00:18:31,159 --> 00:18:36,320 prominent and I will take you Cornell as an exception. For Area Studies 215 00:18:36,320 --> 00:18:40,669 scholars who study Asia and spend long years learning Asian languages it is not 216 00:18:40,669 --> 00:18:44,090 surprising that their linguistic investment can at times transform our 217 00:18:44,090 --> 00:18:48,080 transition into effective and even libidinal investments which in turn 218 00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:51,289 partially conditioned the kind of scholarship produced, the methods 219 00:18:51,289 --> 00:18:56,059 deployed and the perspectives preferred. I don't have time here to offer a 220 00:18:56,059 --> 00:19:00,259 critique of Area Studies, suffice it to say that the issue of linguistic access 221 00:19:00,259 --> 00:19:03,710 lies at the core of the disjunctive relationship between post-colonial 222 00:19:03,710 --> 00:19:08,690 studies and area studies there's a special issue being planned by Naoki 223 00:19:08,690 --> 00:19:16,539 Sakai and Kevin Walker, one of his former students called "At the end of Area" and 224 00:19:16,539 --> 00:19:21,049 it's a critique of Area Studies at the moment at the present moment and it's 225 00:19:21,049 --> 00:19:25,490 coming out hopefully soon and I have an essay in it that critiques Area Studies 226 00:19:25,490 --> 00:19:32,870 from racialized perspectives. Now from Sinophone perspective, given the limits 227 00:19:32,870 --> 00:19:37,730 of Anglo-Franco focus, the desire to expand the post-colonial critique has 228 00:19:37,730 --> 00:19:42,139 been rather au courant these days such as one - the call for attending to the other 229 00:19:42,139 --> 00:19:46,480 Europe that has been marginalized - Eastern Europe and the rest - 230 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:51,429 negotiating post-socialism with post- colonialism, minor and major empires and 231 00:19:51,429 --> 00:19:56,890 countries without colonies. Two: the call to attend to the entire post-Soviet 232 00:19:56,890 --> 00:20:02,410 sphere of 28 countries including the former Soviet Republic. Three: the call 233 00:20:02,410 --> 00:20:06,429 particularly important for my purpose to consider the Americas most seriously 234 00:20:06,429 --> 00:20:12,820 especially the Spanish Empire. Most crucially for my purpose here I want to 235 00:20:12,820 --> 00:20:19,750 highlight the work of Breny Mendoza who hasn't published a lot in English 236 00:20:19,750 --> 00:20:24,190 but some of her essays in Spanish and her reminder that the conquest of the 237 00:20:24,190 --> 00:20:28,420 Americas by the Spanish was crucial to the configuration of capitalism in 238 00:20:28,420 --> 00:20:32,350 Europe and without the rise and expansion of European capitalism there 239 00:20:32,350 --> 00:20:37,210 would not have been the colonization of Asia. In short the colonization of 240 00:20:37,210 --> 00:20:42,670 Asia was mediated by the colonization of the Americas and this is the relational 241 00:20:42,670 --> 00:20:48,309 history that undergirds my intervention into post-colonial critique. As it's well 242 00:20:48,309 --> 00:20:53,140 known the Spanish silver dollar, minted from silver from the Americas, and 243 00:20:53,140 --> 00:20:58,570 transported by Manila aliens also known as China ships for mainly carrying 244 00:20:58,570 --> 00:21:02,860 Chinese goods to Spain was the first global currency accepted by China for 245 00:21:02,860 --> 00:21:07,690 about two hundred years between the 17th and 19th centuries. This is a well known 246 00:21:07,690 --> 00:21:11,830 example of how Europe, the Americas, Southeast Asia and China had been 247 00:21:11,830 --> 00:21:15,550 connected in the global economic relations which were colonial relations 248 00:21:15,550 --> 00:21:20,559 involving Spanish America as well as the Spanish Philippines. The discovery of 249 00:21:20,559 --> 00:21:26,200 silver in the Americas of course also accentuated the growth of the African 250 00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:32,980 slave trade. Colonialism is produced out of global relations period. Robert Young 251 00:21:32,980 --> 00:21:38,260 has in this regard usefully call for a tri-continental orientation - Latin 252 00:21:38,260 --> 00:21:43,150 America, Africa and Asia in post-colonial studies in his book "Post-colonialism and 253 00:21:43,150 --> 00:21:47,410 historic construction". Young's main focus however remains the European empires of 254 00:21:47,410 --> 00:21:50,980 the British and the French, again centering his critique against the same 255 00:21:50,980 --> 00:21:56,230 essentialized west in this case including the United States. Southeast 256 00:21:56,230 --> 00:22:00,190 Asia received very brief treatment in the book, all in less than a few pages 257 00:22:00,190 --> 00:22:05,950 in terms of the obligatory reference to the Bandung Conference in 1955 and of 258 00:22:05,950 --> 00:22:12,549 course also obligatory reference to the Vietnam War. When the account of history 259 00:22:12,549 --> 00:22:17,379 zoomed out, you know, to this tri- continental or tetra-continental or 260 00:22:17,379 --> 00:22:21,700 world and global level Southeast Asian countries are usually even more readily 261 00:22:21,700 --> 00:22:28,419 relegated to insignificance. Sinophone studies, defined as a study of synergic 262 00:22:28,419 --> 00:22:32,230 language communities and cultures around the world and on the margins of China 263 00:22:32,230 --> 00:22:39,100 and Chineseness. So this definition has been very much you know engaged with 264 00:22:39,100 --> 00:22:43,960 contested with and and so forth and I intentionally leave the phrasing on the 265 00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:48,789 margins of China and Chineseness ambiguous in order to leave room for, you 266 00:22:48,789 --> 00:22:54,580 know, greater flexibility in talking about Sinophone framework. What's 267 00:22:54,580 --> 00:23:00,220 important to me is not what Sinophone is but what Sinophone does right so if 268 00:23:00,220 --> 00:23:04,899 we're coining new concepts, the concepts have to work, they have to do the work 269 00:23:04,899 --> 00:23:10,690 and it's not for you know no reason we need new concepts. With new concepts come 270 00:23:10,690 --> 00:23:16,600 new ways of looking at the world hopefully. So Sinophone Studies has been a 271 00:23:16,600 --> 00:23:20,440 one effort that not only aims to expand the post-colonial critique but to 272 00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:24,700 go beyond it as a Sinophone use imbricated in divergent, multiple and 273 00:23:24,700 --> 00:23:28,809 layered colonial conditions that exceed the post-colonial framework and 274 00:23:28,809 --> 00:23:34,629 is also inherently inter-imperial. In Southeast Asia the Sinophone with 275 00:23:34,629 --> 00:23:39,220 the exception of Singapore has been a minority in community during the 276 00:23:39,220 --> 00:23:44,139 colonial period and after and this is the history of the China lover in Cho Lon, 277 00:23:44,139 --> 00:23:51,610 in Margarite Duras's novel "The Lover". Before the European arrival, traders and 278 00:23:51,610 --> 00:23:55,059 immigrants from China started arriving in Southeast Asia since at least the 279 00:23:55,059 --> 00:24:00,820 13th century and by 1700 were unrivaled as the preeminent commercial minority 280 00:24:00,820 --> 00:24:05,590 everywhere in Southeast Asia. Historical records show that they were originally 281 00:24:05,590 --> 00:24:10,059 very welcomed for their wealth, skills and international connections and there is 282 00:24:10,059 --> 00:24:13,170 no distinct notion that these people were Chinese in 283 00:24:13,170 --> 00:24:19,790 any specific way. The early settlers became the so-called Straits Chinese. 284 00:24:19,790 --> 00:24:25,980 They were a large group of mixed people such as Baba Nyonya, the locally 285 00:24:25,980 --> 00:24:29,940 born Peranakans who spoke their distinctive languages then mix different sinitic 286 00:24:29,940 --> 00:24:34,440 languages such as Hokkien and Cantonese with Malay. In other words it was not the 287 00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:38,760 European colonizers who have created the conditioned racial and cultural mixing as 288 00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:44,070 has been theorized in post-colonial studies, rather they were already mixed 289 00:24:44,070 --> 00:24:51,840 before the European arrival. Mixing of course is one of the most important if 290 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,130 not the most popular concepts in post-colonial theory with correlates in 291 00:24:56,130 --> 00:25:01,320 three imperial languages - the French: "metissage", the English: "hybridity" and the 292 00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:07,020 Spanish: "mesti- zaje". In all these instances the emphasis is on the mixing of 293 00:25:07,020 --> 00:25:10,799 Europeans and the native, not the mixing that had already been going on for 294 00:25:10,799 --> 00:25:15,780 centuries on the ground among more than two groups of non-european people and 295 00:25:15,780 --> 00:25:19,830 Ann Stoler, when discussing the issue of metissage in Indochina for instance, 296 00:25:19,830 --> 00:25:24,330 does not even make one mention of the Hua people. In a book-length study on 297 00:25:24,330 --> 00:25:29,040 the racial relations of desire in colonial Southeast Asia her emphasis is again on 298 00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:34,020 Europeanness and whiteness. In one sense the Chinese Southeast Asians were twice 299 00:25:34,020 --> 00:25:38,990 denied their hybridities - they were denied a chance to be metis 300 00:25:38,990 --> 00:25:44,040 mestizo, mestiza, Baba Nyonya when in fact there already have been these 301 00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:48,690 before the European arrival. In the Philippines for instance the term 302 00:25:48,690 --> 00:25:55,500 mestizo mestiza actually is exclusively used to designate those filipinos with 303 00:25:55,500 --> 00:26:02,040 some Chinese ancestry so mestizo is actually Chinese in the Philippines. 304 00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:08,890 Before Benedict Anderson in this regard argues that it was actually the 305 00:26:08,890 --> 00:26:11,860 arrival of the Europeans that turned these people into Chinese 306 00:26:11,860 --> 00:26:16,390 I think this argument is made by others as well but you know as a non Southeast 307 00:26:16,390 --> 00:26:21,030 Asian specialist so much of our, you know, knowledge of Southeast Asia or 308 00:26:21,030 --> 00:26:25,960 inspiration is gained from reading Ben Anderson who was one of your colleagues 309 00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:33,730 and I know that's a complicated issue within Southeast Asian Studies how that 310 00:26:33,730 --> 00:26:38,620 really works. European colonizers instituted various policies of racial 311 00:26:38,620 --> 00:26:42,910 divide, insisting that even those who had been there for generations and spoken no 312 00:26:42,910 --> 00:26:47,500 sinitic language of any kind or Chinese, the Dutch for instance had a 313 00:26:47,500 --> 00:26:52,450 strict policy of governance of the Indies Chinese with sanctuaryy codes, 314 00:26:52,450 --> 00:26:59,730 quote from Ben Anderson, sanctuary codes, residential sequestration, 315 00:26:59,730 --> 00:27:04,690 imposed inheritance regulations while creating collaborationist 316 00:27:04,690 --> 00:27:10,450 business elites. And in these they imitated British practices. Fearing that 317 00:27:10,450 --> 00:27:14,860 their Chinese minorities who collude with China or gain too much dominance in 318 00:27:14,860 --> 00:27:20,020 their colonies, the colonial powers exercised hysterical control, in many 319 00:27:20,020 --> 00:27:24,700 cases leading to massacres of the Chinese minorities as early as the 16th 320 00:27:24,700 --> 00:27:31,780 century most notably in Manila in 1586, 1603, 1639, in 1662 and 1686 and 321 00:27:31,780 --> 00:27:42,100 in Batavia, today's Jakarta, in 1740 while Brunei Cambodia Vietnam Siam and Malaya 322 00:27:42,100 --> 00:27:46,660 also saw many incidents of racial killings of Chinese minorities during the 323 00:27:46,660 --> 00:27:51,910 colonial period. By 1920 a specific discourse of a Chinese imperialism 324 00:27:51,910 --> 00:27:56,740 emerged in the Dutch East Indies expressing the fear that the massive 325 00:27:56,740 --> 00:28:00,790 migration of Chinese who bring Chinese imperialist thinking with them and those 326 00:28:00,790 --> 00:28:05,470 Indies-Chinese already there would support such expansionism. They consider 327 00:28:05,470 --> 00:28:15,780 such a scenario to be, quote, faithful for the Dutch future which is a quote from colonial government document regarding this issue 328 00:28:15,780 --> 00:28:21,580 in the post-colonial period Southeast Asia's anti-sinicism, so this is a new 329 00:28:21,580 --> 00:28:26,110 term coined by scholars who've studied this instead of semitism 330 00:28:26,110 --> 00:28:30,390 anti-sinicism meaning the racism against the Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia. 331 00:28:30,390 --> 00:28:34,600 Anti-sinicism against the Chinese minorities in their midst continued 332 00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:41,290 unabated until as late as 1998 with numerous incidents of racial killings in 333 00:28:41,290 --> 00:28:46,750 Indonesia including the death of about 300,000 in the 1965 communist 334 00:28:46,750 --> 00:28:51,340 purge. So imagine, right, because China was a communist country if you're 335 00:28:51,340 --> 00:28:56,080 Chinese in Southeast Asia you can be easily considered, right, you can make 336 00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:01,270 that conflation very easily and and in their name you can be persecuted and 337 00:29:01,270 --> 00:29:06,640 this happened to a lot of Chinese minorities across Southeast Asia of 338 00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,429 course with the exception of Cambodia and Vietnam because they have Communist 339 00:29:09,429 --> 00:29:15,880 you know sympathies and regimes but let's say Malaysia, Malaya, especially 340 00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:20,679 because the Malayan Communist Party the membership of the Malayan Communist party 341 00:29:20,679 --> 00:29:26,440 established in 1930 was half Chinese Malaysians and half Malays and you know 342 00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:33,100 after the colonizers after the British left Malayan Communist Party was basically 343 00:29:33,100 --> 00:29:42,910 you know persecuted and you know in very bloody fashion and many of them became 344 00:29:42,910 --> 00:29:48,670 guerilla fighters in the rainforest of the Borneo and are hiding in 345 00:29:48,670 --> 00:29:54,490 northern parts of Malaya Malaysia and and they didn't know that things 346 00:29:54,490 --> 00:29:57,700 have changed in Malaysia and there are interesting narratives about these 347 00:29:57,700 --> 00:30:03,280 people who emerge in the 1990s yeah they've been hiding from the communist 348 00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:08,920 purge and these are Chinese Malaysians who could been hiding from 349 00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:12,570 the communist purge for decades. 350 00:30:13,670 --> 00:30:22,549 The 1965 Communist purge, the May 1969 racial program in Jakarta and 351 00:30:22,549 --> 00:30:27,080 Vietnam expulsion of the Hua in the hundreds of thousands in 1978-79 352 00:30:27,080 --> 00:30:31,760 to name just a few, an argument can be made that post-colonial Southeast Asian 353 00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,990 states' s anti-sinicism is a legacy of colonial policies that scapegoated the 354 00:30:35,990 --> 00:30:41,080 Chinese minorities in the face of fear and anxiety due to an imagined or real 355 00:30:41,080 --> 00:30:47,120 Chinese imperialism so if so what about this Chinese imperialism in Southeast 356 00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:53,690 Asia. Is it imagined or is it real? This is a second story I'm trying to tell in 357 00:30:53,690 --> 00:30:58,160 the beginning of my talk with regards to Hanoi - Chinese empire and its 358 00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:04,220 cultural consequences in Vietnam. These consequences are so pervasive that a 359 00:31:04,220 --> 00:31:11,090 recent book by a scholar at Vanderbilt Ben Tran calls modern Vietnam 360 00:31:11,090 --> 00:31:16,730 he calls modern Vietnam "post-Mandarin Vietnam". So why would you call 361 00:31:16,730 --> 00:31:21,850 modern Vietnam a post-Mandarin Vietnam right basically it's post Chinese 362 00:31:21,850 --> 00:31:25,820 Vietnam. Indeed European fears had their 363 00:31:25,820 --> 00:31:31,850 historical precedence. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans during the 364 00:31:31,850 --> 00:31:36,620 early and relatively open stage the Chinese had actually created ruling 365 00:31:36,620 --> 00:31:46,340 dynasties in Southeast Asia notably in Ayutthaya, Brunei, Malacca and Demak. They 366 00:31:46,340 --> 00:31:53,120 also established autonomous Chinese polities at Ha Tien in Vietnam, in 367 00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:56,540 Vietnam-Cambodia borderland and in the goldfields of Western Borneo 368 00:31:56,540 --> 00:32:01,220 and part of some burial Bangkok Dynasty in Siam were themselves half 369 00:32:01,220 --> 00:32:04,280 Chinese. Among them the independent republic in 370 00:32:04,280 --> 00:32:09,919 western Borneo the LanFang Republic. LanFang Gongheguo for instance lasted 371 00:32:09,919 --> 00:32:17,630 over 100 years - 1777 to 1884 - and it's one of the earliest republics in 372 00:32:17,630 --> 00:32:22,370 the world. Scholars have argued that these can variously consider settlers' 373 00:32:22,370 --> 00:32:26,360 dynasties, settlers' colonies or tributaries' 374 00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:30,710 states to China. The relations between China and Southeast Asia in the 375 00:32:30,710 --> 00:32:35,030 post-colonial period have been nothing but turbulent right after the Europeans 376 00:32:35,030 --> 00:32:39,650 have fled even among even if when we figure in the Bandung conference and the 377 00:32:39,650 --> 00:32:43,580 so-called sort of non-aligned countries and you 378 00:32:43,580 --> 00:32:49,760 know countries of color or people of color's solidarity. The Chinese economic 379 00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:54,050 support as it's known was crucial in sustaining the Pol Pot regime. China 380 00:32:54,050 --> 00:32:57,830 fought a border war with Vietnam in 1979 and continues to have military 381 00:32:57,830 --> 00:33:03,140 skirmishes along the border including border skirmishes with Myanmar which 382 00:33:03,140 --> 00:33:08,540 continues at this moment. There are also the famous conflicts that everybody 383 00:33:08,540 --> 00:33:11,900 reads in the news about in the South China Sea involving the Philippines 384 00:33:11,900 --> 00:33:16,580 Vietnam Malaysia but in effect China has territorial disputes now with 385 00:33:16,580 --> 00:33:23,810 almost all of its neighbors. Okay, so the question of Chinese Empire if there's 386 00:33:23,810 --> 00:33:27,920 relatively no doubt that Britain and France were empires that behaved 387 00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:32,690 imperialistically, so empires that behave imperialistically 388 00:33:32,690 --> 00:33:37,550 are empires, see the tautology here. The question of Chinese Empire 389 00:33:37,550 --> 00:33:42,200 persistently marginalizing post-colonial studies has been beset by ambiguity if 390 00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:47,630 not controversy. The two words - China and Empire - have both been 391 00:33:47,630 --> 00:33:51,890 to different degrees unstable and problematic and particularly so when 392 00:33:51,890 --> 00:33:56,750 they're placed together into the compound term Chinese Empire and we also 393 00:33:56,750 --> 00:34:05,380 of course we all understand the pressure that one must feel when 394 00:34:05,380 --> 00:34:13,460 calling China an empire today. China of course is a self-signifier as 395 00:34:13,460 --> 00:34:17,510 not only that what constitutes China geographically has changed dramatically 396 00:34:17,510 --> 00:34:22,820 over time but also that the name China itself is a construction with a 397 00:34:22,820 --> 00:34:27,620 contested historical and textual genealogy. Each instance of construction 398 00:34:27,620 --> 00:34:33,530 implicating the questions of who defines it, who claims it, and doing so on what 399 00:34:33,530 --> 00:34:36,040 grounds. 400 00:34:36,230 --> 00:34:40,080 Even if put in the most general terms they are both spatial and temporal 401 00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:45,360 variations to this construction. Spatially what we call China has been 402 00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:48,510 a changing geographical entity with dramatically different territory 403 00:34:48,510 --> 00:34:53,100 boundaries over time and it is smallest - it was perhaps one-tenth of today's 404 00:34:53,100 --> 00:34:56,190 China. What territorial China has been over 405 00:34:56,190 --> 00:35:02,720 history therefore not a given but a process as scholar a Chinese scholar 406 00:35:02,720 --> 00:35:10,320 living in Shanghai Ge Zhaoguang claims - actually this is not his own original 407 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:14,370 claim although he's known for this claim so recent studies have shown that 408 00:35:14,370 --> 00:35:20,100 actually he's, he's gotten this claim from the German scholar Rolf Trauzettel 409 00:35:20,100 --> 00:35:29,340 well I don't know how to pronounce his name - T-R-A-U-Z-E-T-T-E-L - Trauzettel. 410 00:35:29,340 --> 00:35:33,510 That the consciousness of China - Zhongguo - is a national identity or a proto-national 411 00:35:33,510 --> 00:35:39,560 identity really only began or began as early as in the Song Dynasty 412 00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:45,990 960 to 1279. Temporally what we call China may not even be the correct nomenclature 413 00:35:45,990 --> 00:35:50,490 for certain periods of history of the changing geographical area especially 414 00:35:50,490 --> 00:35:54,870 when it comes to those historical periods prior to the Sui dynasty 581-618 415 00:35:54,870 --> 00:35:59,910 when the territory about the size of 1/4 of today's China was unified under 416 00:35:59,910 --> 00:36:04,530 ethnic Han rule as well periods of non-Han rule so especially in regards to 417 00:36:04,530 --> 00:36:09,090 periods of non-Han rule right so the so-called Han Chinese were not the rulers of 418 00:36:09,090 --> 00:36:14,880 these places then does that mean that it's a Chinese place right? These include 419 00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:19,440 such times of intense fragmentation as the Six Dynasties and those eras of 420 00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:25,410 non-Han rule such as the Mongol Empire, aka Yuan Dynasty so if you're Chinese you 421 00:36:25,410 --> 00:36:30,660 say Yuan Dynasty if you're not Chinese you say Mongol Empire and the Manchu Empire 422 00:36:30,660 --> 00:36:34,590 right aka Qing Dynasty similarly if you are 423 00:36:34,590 --> 00:36:39,580 Chinese it's Qing Dynasty if you're not Han Chinese it's Manchu Empire, right? 424 00:36:39,580 --> 00:36:44,730 For our purposes here the crucial question is whether we can 425 00:36:44,730 --> 00:36:48,400 consider today's China as Empire and this question must be related 426 00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:54,640 to the other question of whether Yuan Dynasty - Mongol Empire - and the Manchu 427 00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:58,740 Empire are Chinese or not but because Manchu Empire immediately precedes the 428 00:36:58,740 --> 00:37:04,360 Han rule that began in 1912 with the Republic of China which then later of 429 00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:11,230 course was inherited by people at PRC today's China and so the crucial 430 00:37:11,230 --> 00:37:15,460 question is you know immediately relevant question is to ask the question 431 00:37:15,460 --> 00:37:23,110 "Is the Manchu Empire Chinese?". This question was the topic of an 432 00:37:23,110 --> 00:37:26,620 intense debate in the field of Chinese Studies in the United States between the 433 00:37:26,620 --> 00:37:31,120 proponents of the sinicization thesis and the scholars of the so-called New 434 00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:36,190 Qing history. It has bearings- this question is not merely who claimed 435 00:37:36,190 --> 00:37:39,610 otherwise the new Qing history who claim otherwise this question is not 436 00:37:39,610 --> 00:37:43,690 merely an academic one however it has bearings on whether 437 00:37:43,690 --> 00:37:47,500 contemporary China is an empire or not on the one hand and the strategic 438 00:37:47,500 --> 00:37:51,460 strategic answers to the question have been deployed by both the Chinese state 439 00:37:51,460 --> 00:37:56,260 and its intellectual apologists for specific purposes amounting practically 440 00:37:56,260 --> 00:38:00,390 to how the state defined sovereignty as well as national security on the other. 441 00:38:00,390 --> 00:38:05,410 Briefly the sinicization thesis is basically a uni-directionness 442 00:38:05,410 --> 00:38:15,130 uni-directional assimilationist thesis as summarized by crustless 443 00:38:15,130 --> 00:38:20,950 Yuen sudden it assumes that the inherent charisma of Chinese culture as the 444 00:38:20,950 --> 00:38:25,240 single civilizing force emanating from the Chinese imperial center has 445 00:38:25,240 --> 00:38:29,680 assimilated all alien cultures and people throughout history including 446 00:38:29,680 --> 00:38:34,450 the appearance of alien rule. For this narrative not only that the history of 447 00:38:34,450 --> 00:38:39,130 military conquests are minimized and displaced but also their local societies 448 00:38:39,130 --> 00:38:43,810 and indigenous populations are detached from and denied their participation as 449 00:38:43,810 --> 00:38:48,730 well as credit in the state making process. According to this thesis then 450 00:38:48,730 --> 00:38:55,780 -the sinicization thesis- everyone ineluctably becomes Chinese thanks to 451 00:38:55,780 --> 00:38:59,570 the superior civilization that is Chinese. How many of us have become 452 00:38:59,570 --> 00:39:06,200 Chinese because you study China right and this is that of course Du Weiming's 453 00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:12,380 cultural China's model. New Qing historians disagree. First and foremost, 454 00:39:12,380 --> 00:39:16,760 they argue for the Manchuness of the Qing Empire. Evidence after evidence 455 00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:20,750 shows how the Manchus deliberately maintained their unique ethnicity 456 00:39:20,750 --> 00:39:24,950 language and culture through for instance the ethnicity-specific and 457 00:39:24,950 --> 00:39:29,450 hereditary eight banners system which began as military divisions but ended up 458 00:39:29,450 --> 00:39:33,560 being mainly identity markers for the Manchus who through the system were 459 00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:38,270 granted land and income for no other reason than their ethnicity. The Chinese 460 00:39:38,270 --> 00:39:41,810 land conquered by the Manchus was only the seventeen provinces of the Ming 461 00:39:41,810 --> 00:39:46,970 Dynasty and to this were added the vast lands of XinJiang, right? 462 00:39:46,970 --> 00:39:52,820 Literally means new dominion so unless it is new why would it be called new 463 00:39:52,820 --> 00:39:59,090 dominion right? XinJiang, Tibetan Mongolia, which along with Manchuria 464 00:39:59,090 --> 00:40:05,090 constituted about five eighths of the entire empire territorially then the so 465 00:40:05,090 --> 00:40:12,620 called China proper was less than half of the Empire so if I answered 466 00:40:12,620 --> 00:40:17,000 positively to the question is mentioned by Chinese meaning yes mentioned prior 467 00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,510 to Chinese then the fact that the Republic of China and the People's 468 00:40:20,510 --> 00:40:24,590 Republic of China have inherited all the territories conquered by the Manchus 469 00:40:24,590 --> 00:40:28,910 except Outer Mongolia unequivocally shows that contemporary China has 470 00:40:28,910 --> 00:40:34,550 inherited the Empire right in a historical succession right if we say 471 00:40:34,550 --> 00:40:39,050 Manchu Empire was Chinese then contemporary China inherited the 472 00:40:39,050 --> 00:40:50,780 Empire. Just a fact. So if I say no, the PRC, that Manchu Empire was not 473 00:40:50,780 --> 00:40:55,280 Chinese then the PRC is a success history, story, 474 00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:59,720 of Chinese nationalism, Han Chinese nationalism, overcoming an alien regime 475 00:40:59,720 --> 00:41:04,820 right the Manchus and restoring a sovereignty from a victimized state, all 476 00:41:04,820 --> 00:41:09,839 the more successful for claiming to have driven out Western imperialists too. 477 00:41:09,839 --> 00:41:14,940 In fact contemporary Chinese nationalism has often utilized both positions even 478 00:41:14,940 --> 00:41:18,029 though they're apparently contradictory with each other 479 00:41:18,029 --> 00:41:23,969 namely Manchu Chinese hence Manchu territory is Chinese right 480 00:41:23,969 --> 00:41:27,809 otherwise how do you say those territories are Chinese unless you say 481 00:41:27,809 --> 00:41:39,089 Manchu Empire is Chinese yes okay see the logic? And simultaneously the Manchu 482 00:41:39,089 --> 00:41:42,239 Empire is not Chinese hence the Chinese were not 483 00:41:42,239 --> 00:41:47,549 imperialists right? They they were and they're not imperialists because Manchu Empire was 484 00:41:47,549 --> 00:41:51,769 is not Chinese, does that make sense? Okay so use two contradictory 485 00:41:51,769 --> 00:41:57,599 statements. The effective use of both positions allows contemporary China to 486 00:41:57,599 --> 00:42:03,450 claim inheritance and legitimacy without taking responsibility. This is the China 487 00:42:03,450 --> 00:42:07,769 that is comprehended within China as a natural consequence of five millennia of 488 00:42:07,769 --> 00:42:12,599 continuous history and political unity and the China as it is attributed as such 489 00:42:12,599 --> 00:42:17,880 and sanctioned by the international community. By this logic if the Mongol 490 00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:23,249 Empire was also Chinese, remember Mongol Empire, you know, rich Persia right? 491 00:42:23,249 --> 00:42:27,329 So if Mongol Empire was also Chinese shouldn't Chinese sovereignty today 492 00:42:27,329 --> 00:42:37,650 extend to today's Iran or was China simply a part of the Mongol Empire right? 493 00:42:37,650 --> 00:42:41,869 So, was Mongol Empire Chinese or was Mongol Empire not Chinese, 494 00:42:41,869 --> 00:42:46,549 depending on which position is taken we can draw dramatically different 495 00:42:46,549 --> 00:42:53,579 political implications. Similarly the term empire has been put into question 496 00:42:53,579 --> 00:42:57,930 in terms of whether Empire and imperialism belong to the same semantic 497 00:42:57,930 --> 00:43:02,700 category and whether then they imply each other or not. Evicting 498 00:43:02,700 --> 00:43:07,099 imperialistically is what makes one an empire then the argument goes 499 00:43:07,099 --> 00:43:12,119 imperialism is a distinctly Western behavior that China has not engaged in 500 00:43:12,119 --> 00:43:18,220 hence China is not an empire right? From within China either Empire 501 00:43:18,220 --> 00:43:23,590 -帝国- is categorically denying to have anything to do with contemporary China 502 00:43:23,590 --> 00:43:28,810 are replaced by other terminologies such as the revived notion of the Chinese 503 00:43:28,810 --> 00:43:36,220 world order known as all under heaven -天下- discourse. The arrival of the new 504 00:43:36,220 --> 00:43:40,480 age of power - 盛世 - or the pursuit and fulfillment 505 00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,720 of the Chinese dream - 中国梦 - in an attempt to account for the supranational 506 00:43:45,720 --> 00:43:49,570 multicultural multi-ethnic and multilingual entity that is today's 507 00:43:49,570 --> 00:43:54,030 China that exceeds the modern notion of the nation-state and while insisting on 508 00:43:54,030 --> 00:43:58,720 Westphalian notion of sovereignty and refusing the term Empire Chinese 509 00:43:58,720 --> 00:44:02,740 intellectuals have had to offer various new concepts to describe the Chinese 510 00:44:02,740 --> 00:44:08,740 state form calling it for instance a multi-systemic state so it's one state 511 00:44:08,740 --> 00:44:14,470 with many systems - a multi-state system - China is a system with many 512 00:44:14,470 --> 00:44:19,780 states - or a civilizational state right so instead of a civilizational 513 00:44:19,780 --> 00:44:24,730 empire it has a state form and so it's a civilizational state where the logic of 514 00:44:24,730 --> 00:44:28,240 belonging of the West frontier especially the greater Tibet and 515 00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:33,850 Xinjiang to China is supposedly totally unique to China. Here is a new version of 516 00:44:33,850 --> 00:44:39,430 Chinese exceptionalism which is crucially calibrated with what Rey Chow 517 00:44:39,430 --> 00:44:47,230 has called in 1998 the logic of the wound. The logic of the wound - 518 00:44:47,230 --> 00:44:54,280 so I've been wounded by you know Western empires right so I am justified 519 00:44:54,280 --> 00:45:01,930 in expressing my ressentiment, my anguish, my anger in however form it 520 00:45:01,930 --> 00:45:06,640 takes in whatever form it takes - that's sort of the logic of the wound. The logic 521 00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:09,940 of the wound makes a fetish of Chinese victimhood at the hands of Western 522 00:45:09,940 --> 00:45:14,860 imperialism since the Opium Wars to such an extent that China can only be the 523 00:45:14,860 --> 00:45:21,910 object of empire and not the subject of empire. This essentially is the Chinese 524 00:45:21,910 --> 00:45:25,300 post-colonial position so in the 19 525 00:45:25,300 --> 00:45:33,400 I think 90s and 2000s within China within PRC there was an emergence of 526 00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:38,890 Chinese post-colonial critique which is basically anti-Western imperialist 527 00:45:38,890 --> 00:45:43,240 critique so Han Chinese intellectuals claimed that they were the victims of 528 00:45:43,240 --> 00:45:48,460 Western imperialism and and that's the Chinese and so 529 00:45:48,460 --> 00:45:53,260 China was post-colonial. The euphemization of Chinese power and 530 00:45:53,260 --> 00:45:57,910 fetishization of Chinese victimhood - both are in fact discourses of Chinese 531 00:45:57,910 --> 00:46:02,950 exceptionalism - vouchsafe the condition in which China is now and forever beyond 532 00:46:02,950 --> 00:46:08,800 reproach leading to the injunction that in so many, so many forms and practices 533 00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:15,010 declares China cannot be criticized. This injunction might have begun as a 534 00:46:15,010 --> 00:46:18,910 psychological need based on past victimhood but given China's economic 535 00:46:18,910 --> 00:46:23,080 and political power with an ever expanding ability to pressure and to 536 00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:29,680 censor is no longer merely psychological. This is the history of the present 537 00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:34,870 connected with the long history of the past. In the longer durée of history, the 538 00:46:34,870 --> 00:46:39,580 100-year history of China being the attack of Empire from mid 19th to mid 539 00:46:39,580 --> 00:46:46,180 20th century is a short and finite duration now given a proper name as one 540 00:46:46,180 --> 00:46:51,790 hundred years of shame - 百年国耻 - it's a proper term to describe 541 00:46:51,790 --> 00:46:57,550 this 100 years of shame. The question we need to ask is this : for how much longer 542 00:46:57,550 --> 00:47:01,690 is the present and the future, for how much longer in the present and the 543 00:47:01,690 --> 00:47:05,740 future should the logic of the wound govern Chinese relations with the rest 544 00:47:05,740 --> 00:47:09,310 of the world? What are the responsibilities of Chinese Studies 545 00:47:09,310 --> 00:47:15,880 scholars or any scholar in such a present? Crucially also what are the 546 00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:19,720 responsibilities of post-colonial critique when Chinese intellectuals have 547 00:47:19,720 --> 00:47:23,950 already hijacked this critique in their criticism of Western imperialism and 548 00:47:23,950 --> 00:47:29,140 claimed of Chinese post-coloniality? Finally, how would a globally oriented 549 00:47:29,140 --> 00:47:32,380 post-colonial critique that takes Southeast Asia and Chinese Empire 550 00:47:32,380 --> 00:47:38,140 seriously look like? I hope I have gestured towards it that in my talk 551 00:47:38,140 --> 00:47:44,250 today in however a small way. Thank you for being such a great audience.