Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification (SUNY series in Global Modernity)

Critiques the idea of a Chinese cultural identity and argues that such identities are instead determined by geopolitical and economic forces. Forget Chineseness provides a critical interpretation of not only discourses of Chinese identity—Chineseness—but also of how they have reflected differences between “Chinese” societies, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, and communities overseas. Allen Chun asserts that while identity does have meaning in cultural, representational terms, it is more importantly a product of its embeddedness in specific entanglements of modernity, colonialism, nation-state formation, and globalization. By articulating these processes underlying institutional practices in relation to public mindsets, it is possible to explain various epistemic moments that form the basis for their sociopolitical transformation. From a broader perspective, this should have salient ramifications for prevailing discussions of identity politics. The concept of identity has not only been predicated on flawed notions of ethnicity and culture in the social sciences but it has also been acutely exacerbated by polarizing assumptions that drive our understanding of identity politics. “Forget Chineseness covers an important topic that continues to stir debate among Chinese-speaking communities ... It will add much to discussion of globalisation, identity formation, capitalism, imperialism, and modernity, among other themes, in graduate seminars ... Chun’s book is a timely reminder of how global and historical phenomena continue to shape identification, a process that is certainly not limited to ‘Chineseness’ but applicable to other presumed identities as well.” — Journal of Contemporary Asia “Readers who have not previously encountered Chun’s work will find important insights on the political projects of Chineseness over three decades. Readers who are familiar with Chun’s scholarship will benefit from having these texts in a single volume. Forget Chineseness would work well for teaching at the graduate level, and is a useful contribution for scholars of China, cultural studies, critical theory, modernity, and global studies.” — Pacific Affairs “It is rare that one reads a book that so thoroughly challenges so many commonly held basic assumptions. For this reason, this book evades succinct summarization and is best read carefully, perhaps twice over. Anyone who takes the time to do so will find the way that one talks and thinks about ‘China’ forever changed.” — The China Quarterly “Forget Chineseness does not only contribute astute observations for scholars in Asian or Cultural Studies, it is also an important book for postcolonial theorists. The book’s importance is in its problematisation of prevailing notions of identity, culture and Chineseness as well as its invitation for postcolonial scholars to think beyond oppositional discourses. Chun’s voice is strong, passionate and bold; his call to explore as well as transcend identity politics of Chineseness, if not already heeded, will be followed by many.” — Postcolonial Studies “...a good example of disentangling complicated historical materials and presenting ambiguous identities in a relatively constructive way.” — Cultural Sociology Allen Chun is Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He is the author of Unstructuring Chinese Society: The Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of “Land” in the New Territories of Hong Kong. The Nineteenth-Century Imperial Archive from the Politics of Difference to the Sociology of Modern Power -- Land as Constituted: The Changing Mythologies of Local Rule in the New Territories of Hong Kong -- Land as Constitutive: The Ambiguities of Territoriality in the Changing Globalism of British Colonial Rule -- Narratives of Tradition and Modernity in the Domestication of the Colonial Mind: Second- and Third-Order Abstractions -- Chapter 5 Critical Cosmopolitanism in the Birth of Hong Kong Place-Based "Identity"--Interstices of Colony, Nation, and Modernity in the Making of a Popular Culture -- Intellectual Salon "Culture" in the Transformation of the Public Sphere -- The Aesthetics of Cultural Eclecticism in an Emerging Culture "Industry"--The Birth of "Local" Popular Culture in the Context of Cosmopolitan Hybridity -- Chapter 6 Hong Kong's Embrace of the Motherland: Economy and Culture as Fictive Commodities -- 1997: A Year of No Significance -- "Postcolonial" Hong Kong: What's Culture Got to Do with It? -- The Public Sphere in Search of a "Structural" Transformation -- Apprehending History Through Its "Effects" -- What Is (Post)Colonial "Modernity"? -- Part Three: The Reclamation of National Destiny: On the Unbearable Heaviness of Identity -- Prologue -- Chapter 7 From the Ashes of Socialist Humanism: The Myth of Guanxi Exceptionalism in the PRC -- From Mianzi to Guanxi to Renqing : Outlines of a Power Theory of Culture -- Guanxi as Phenomenon versus Guanxi as Problematic -- Culture as Meaning Versus Culture as Practice -- Exchange as Ritual Behavior in the Interpretation of Practice -- The Guanxi Problematic in the Fault Lines of an Emerging Capitalist Regime -- Chapter 8 A New Greater China: The Demise of Transnationalism and Other Great White Hopes -- East Asian Fantasies in Perspective -- Greater China as Transnationalizing Imaginary The Changing Geopolitics of the China Triangle -- Oligarchic Capitalism as Antidemocratization and Anti-Autonomy -- Chapter 9 Confucius, Incorporated: The Advent of Capitalism with PRC Characteristics -- The Renaissance of National Identity in the Politics of Colonial Difference -- Confucius Institutes in the Cultural Policy of State: A Fatal Attraction -- The Great Collusion: Capitalist Oligarchy and Party Domination -- Part Four: Who Wants to Be Diasporic? The Fictions and Facts of Critical Ethnic Subjectivity -- Prologue -- Chapter 10 The Yellow Pacific: Diasporas of Mind in the Politics of Caste Consciousness -- The Double Consciousness of a Transnational Modernity -- Diaspora: A Term for All Seasons? -- Celebrating Hybridity in an Era of Invented Indigenization -- Toward a New Politics of Place in the Cosmopolises of Changing Identities -- Chapter 11 Ethnicity in the Prison House of the Modern Nation: The State in Singapore as Exception -- The Invention of Nationalism -- Ethnicity in Place -- The Sterilization of Religious Values -- Discourses of Public Culture in Comparative Geopolitical Perspective -- The State of the State -- Chapter 12 The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Asian Studies in the International Division of Labor -- Humanitas and Anthropos as a Problem of Epistemic Gazing -- The Complicity of Epistemic Identities and Discourses as Signifying Regimes -- Globalization and Ethnicization as Entangled Processes -- The Identity Crisis of Asian Studies within the Postcolonial Aura -- Afterword -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index Preface Introduction Part I. Postwar, Post-Republican Taiwan: Civilizational Mythologies in the Politics of the Unreal 1. Chineseness, Literarily Speaking: The Burden of Tradition in the Making of Modernity 2. The Moral Cultivation of Citizenship as Acculturating and Socializing Regime 3. The Coming Crisis of Multiculturalism: When the Imagined Community Hits the Fan Part II. Hong Kong Betwixt and Between: The Liminality of Culture Before the End of History 4. Hong Kong before Hong Kongness: The Changing Genealogies and Faces of Colonialism 5. Critical Cosmopolitanism in the Birth of Hong Kong Place-Based “Identity” 6. Hong Kong’s Embrace of the Motherland: Economy and Culture as Fictive Commodities Part III. The Reclamation of National Destiny: On the Unbearable Heaviness of Identity 7. From the Ashes of Socialist Humanism: The Myth of Guanxi Exceptionalism in the PRC 8. A New Greater China: The Demise of Transnationalism and Other Great White Hopes 9. Confucius, Incorporated: The Advent of Capitalism with PRC Characteristics Part IV. Who Wants to Be Diasporic? The Fictions and Facts of Critical Ethnic Subjectivity 10. The Yellow Pacific: Diasporas of Mind in the Politics of Caste Consciousness 11. Ethnicity in the Prison House of the Modern Nation: The State in Singapore as Exception 12. The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Asian Studies in the International Division of Labor Afterword Appendix Notes Bibliography Index Forget Chineseness" provides a critical interpretation of not only discourses of Chinese identity - Chineseness - but also of how they have reflected differences between ?Chinese? societies, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, People?s Republic of China, Singapore, and communities overseas. Allen Chun asserts that while identity does have meaning in cultural, representational terms, it is more importantly a product of its embeddedness in specific entanglements of modernity, colonialism, nation-state formation, and globalization. By articulating these processes underlying institutional practices in relation to public mindsets, it is possible to explain various epistemic moments that form the basis for their sociopolitical transformation. From a broader perspective, this should have salient ramifications for prevailing discussions of identity politics. The concept of identity has not only been predicated on flawed notions of ethnicity and culture in the social sciences but it has also been acutely exacerbated by polarizing assumptions that drive our understanding of identity politics.