THE VIRTUE OF A HISTORIAN: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN HERMAN PAUL AND CHINESE THEORISTS OF HISTORY

This article reflects on the role of scholarly virtues in the Chinese theory of history and compares it with the recent approach proposed by Herman Paul. The first three parts reconstruct what might be called a “Chinese virtue epistemology of history,” starting from Confucian views on sincerity in writing history and then turns to concepts of an “unbiased mind” and the “responsibility of a historian.” The latter ideas were developed by Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801), who introduced the concept of “the virtue of a historian (shide),” treating it as a sympathetic understanding toward the narrated characters. Interpretations of shide changed along with modern Chinese theorists of history, some of whom elaborated on it in the positivist manner. Thereafter, the article outlines Paul's view on the function of epistemic virtues in the formation of “historical persona.” In the summary, I will draw upon the main similarities and differences between Paul's position and the traditional Chinese view in order to point out the main directions for further research on this topic.     

Society与“社会”的早期相遇:一项概念史的考察

古汉语中的“社会”一词,主要指民间迎神赛会,往往与官方或儒家精英居高临下的轻蔑贬抑态度相连。来华传教士最早将society概念引入中国,使这个外来术语与“会”“社”等本土语汇之间建立联系。19世纪末20世纪初,日语中的“社会”(Shakai)这一近代新概念传入中国以后,又跟汉语中原有的旧式“社会”一词及其关联的经验和体验相混杂。由此生成的中国近代“社会”概念呈现了暧昧的特征,从理论上说指向时代变革的不二方向;但在经验和实践层面,又仍然带有官方或者精英视角之下的令人不屑、不满,甚至是不安的负面意涵。     

Political chess and vernacular discursive strategies: A study of the late Qing Sichuan Railway Protection Movement

ABSTRACT

Interdisciplinary literary and historical studies of late Qing vernacular are rare, and the vernacular texts of the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement have been overlooked by academics. This paper focuses on this topic, arguing that the discursive strategies in such texts revolved around the movement's aim of “breaking the agreement and protecting the railway,” and primarily included discourses on constitutionalism, financial interests, patriotism, cultural order, and the late emperor, as well the ideas of “ridding the emperor of evil ministers,” borrowed from traditional Chinese political discourses, and “national subjugation,” within the context of the national crisis. None of these discourses were “anti-Manchu” or “revolutionary,” yet they were able to mobilize the people of Sichuan to devote themselves to the Railway Protection Movement, as well as attracting the “sympathetic understanding” of high-ranking Sichuan officials, such as Wang Renwen 王人文 and Zhao Erfeng 赵尔丰, thus lending discursive power to the railway protection camp in its game of political chess with the Qing court. Meanwhile, the government's weak discursive power was an important factor in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty by the revolutionary tide triggered by the Sichuan Railway Protection Movement. The discursive strategies in vernacular texts on railway protection (including the particularly strategic discourse on the late emperor) spread, transformed, and were reborn to varying degrees over the course of history.     

Guanhua,Guoyu, and Putonghua: Politics and “proper names” for standard language in modern China

ABSTRACT

Guanhua (official language), Guoyu (national language), and Putonghua (common language) are generally regarded as different names for the same thing in different eras, but from the perspective of cultural history, there are many subtle semantic differences between these three concepts, symbolizing how different social classes and political groups defined their particular experiences, expectations, and efforts to take action. Guoyu, which replaced Guanhua in the late Qing Dynasty, is closely bound up with the construction of modern nationalism. In the 1930s, leftist intellectuals imbued Putonghua with strong proletariat attributes and overtones of indigenous and ethnic equality, wielding it as a tool for critiques against Guoyu. Although Putonghua returned to certain key positions of Guoyu after the mid-1950s, it putatively emphasized the legacy of the leftist language movement, and represented a new political identity. Through these “proper names” for the standard language, it was possible not only to launch a political and social “revolution,” but also to smooth over the historical rifts that this engendered, by repeatedly revising the concepts of “written” and “standard” to form a linear national narrative.     

On Meng Sen’s teaching and lecture notes of Ming and Qing history at Peking University during the 1930s

ABSTRACT

While teaching the histories of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Meng Sen (1869–1937), developed three textbooks in the 1930s: Lecture Notes on the Ming History (明史讲义 Mingshi jiangyi), Lecture Notes on the Qing History (清史讲义 Qingshi jiangyi), and Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State (满洲开国史讲义 Manzhou kaiguo shi jiangyi). In these book titles, the term “history” refers specifically to “standard history.” In tracing Meng Sen’s original intention in producing these textbooks, all three works suggest the author’s desire to write history. He wrote Lecture Notes on the Ming History to prepare a future revision of the History of the Ming (明史 Mingshi); similarly he wrote Lecture Notes on the Qing History and Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State with the intention to revise the Draft History of the Qing (清史稿 Qingshi gao). Meng Sen summarized Sima Guang’s (司马光, 1019–86) view of history as “imitating the good and avoiding the bad,” which he believed represented the “essential meaning of history.” Meng followed Sima Guang’s model in compiling the Lecture Notes on the Ming History and Lecture Notes on the Qing History, as shown in their style and format. By comparison, his writing of the Lecture Notes on the History of the Founding of the Manchu State attempted to merge the traditional annals–biographic style with narrative history from the West, or to pour old wine into a new bottle. Meng Sen presented his innovative efforts at Peking University, introducing young scholars to standards for history writing, and doing his utmost to guide and encourage his students; some of whom became noted scholars in the study of Ming and Qing histories.     

The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object

In this article, I examine an Aboriginal ritual object, the secret/sacred tywerrenge which in many respects lies at the heart of Central Australian Aboriginal religious belief. Given its ritual power, the tywerrenge has always held a special place in the administrative rationalities of both colonial and post-colonial authorities. For certain missionaries, the tywerrenge was seen as an object to be eliminated as it constituted an impediment to Aboriginal “salvation”. For early anthropologists such as Baldwin Spencer, they offered material evidence supporting social evolutionist theories regarding the “staged” transformation of “primitive” religious beliefs into science. More recently, tywerrenge have been subject to an intensive regime of inspection and evaluation by government authorities, museums, and land councils. Indeed, they have come to play a significant role in the enforcement of Australian law under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act since the possession of a tywerrenge can decide the ownership of traditional lands. In short, these religious objects—and the beliefs associated with them—have been co-opted and employed by a variety of authorities in order to achieve a range of governmental ends. In this sense, tywerrenge have been transformed into instruments of colonial and post-colonial rule.     

Anti-ism thinkers: The post-May Fourth schism in political thought

Abstract

This article is a continuation of “Advent of the Age of Isms,” which primarily discusses a period teeming with various “isms” (主義 zhuyi). During this time, there were in fact a number of figures who held overtly or covertly opposing attitudes, in both cases giving rise to a phenomenon of fragmentation and asystematicness. Whether consisting of negative responses to the new political theory of “isms,” this “remedy for all ills,” or of piecemeal, asystematic criticism, the phenomenon itself served as a foil to the colossal intellectual forces of the Age of “Ismization.” This article offers a preliminary discussion of this phenomenon.     

能动与受动：道咸新学表现的转折与“冲击/反应”模式

道咸新学是清代学术史上的一个重要转折,其“务为前人所不为”的态度既是学问的自然扩展,也显露出明显的“造反”意味,使清代学术在很大程度上游离出明清之际开创的风气。经学内部治学空间、门类和取向逐渐外移,而此前臣服于“汉学专制”的“一切诸学”从边缘走向中心。道咸新学体现了中国传统学术的多元性和开放性,对冲击中国的西教和西学做出了不同的反应,在不断受动中仍保持了能动。由于西潮冲击带来更大的转变,且西学稍后占据“新学”之名,致使道咸“新学”在学术史上呈失语状态。梳理学术史上这一重大转折,探究这一不待西潮冲击先已出现的自身变动与稍后席卷中国之西学的关联互动,对理解西潮冲击的实际影响,以及将中西各自整体化的“冲击/反应”解释模式,都有所助益。     

A REGIME OF UNTRANSLATABLES: TEMPORALITIES OF TRANSLATION AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

This essay focuses on untranslatability to discuss the diachronic temporality of the history of concepts. Defining untranslatables as the paradoxical origin and product of translating, it explores their role in mediating the long‐term history of concepts by disrupting the historical boundaries of a period and challenging the contexts through which past meaning is confined to the moyenne durée. Addressing first the critical appraisal of the history of ideas by Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, it discusses their alternative suggestion of a history of discourses, rather than concepts or ideas, to move to Pocock's formulation of the category of “diachronic translation” as a shift from the moyenne to the longue durée. It then turns to Begriffsgeschichte to explore the interrelation of untranslatables, Koselleck's consideration of translation, and his theory of historical times. It suggests that Koselleck not only states that translation mediates the history of concepts, but also envisions a distinct temporality associated with the aporetic condition of translating what is untranslatable. The aporia of translations underlies both the historical depth of concepts as a conceptual reserve and an act of silencing past meaning. The ensuing conjunction of surplus and erasure qualifies Koselleck's category of multiple times by designating the time of translation as “obscure time.” It is a time that displaces us from the apparent meaning of concepts in a certain period by receding toward the otherness of the past and suspending meaning that is already in the future. These two characteristics of obscure time, its receding and suspending nature, not only stand against the continuity of periodizing; they also make visible a politics of translation as an act of disruption of the present wherein the past becomes a reserve of meanings resisting appropriative interpretation.     

Undoing Nature: The John Muir Trust's “Journey for the Wild”, the UK,Summer 2006

Abstract: I take as a point of departure for a discussion of the idea of nature the John Muir Trust's much publicised Journey for the Wild which took place in the UK during the summer of 2006. My objective is to explore how, at the same time that the “wild” was performed as a political category through the Journey, replicating the binary nature/society, prevalent norms of nature that depend on that binary, including, ironically, those of John Muir himself, were “undone”. I work with Judith Butler's (2004, Undoing Gender) ideas of “doing” and “undoing” gender and what counts as human, and her link between the articulation of gender and the human on the one hand and, on the other, a politics of new possibilities. Taking her argument “elsewhere”—unravelling what is performed as “wild” and what counts as “nature”—and using as evidence the art of Eoin Cox, the actions of journeyers, extracts from their diaries and from Messages for the Wild delivered to the Scottish Parliament, I suggest that the idea of a working wild points towards more socially just political possibilities than a politics of nature defined through a binary.     

Karl Polanyi for Historians: An Alternative Economic Narrative

The purpose of this essay is to provide the historian with a generic understanding of the term economy by examining some aspects of the work of the Hungarian “economic historian” Karl Polanyi (1886–1964). It does not seek to explain Polanyi's economic ideas to economists nor does it seek to locate his ideas within the discourses of the academic discipline of economics; there is abundant academic literature which carries out those tasks. This essay is intended to help fill a void in the historical understanding, especially the modern historical understanding, of the term economy, and of how the characteristics associated with it are generally understood. Yet, in reality, it is the neoclassical paradigm of economics which is typically and uncritically taken to be the touchstone for understanding the economy. This circumstance is problematic, however, when referring to the economy of societies earlier than the late nineteenth century or of societies whose culture differs radically from that of the advanced capitalist “west.” Polanyi's insights may help historians avoid the risk of either distorting or anachronistically misunderstanding the economy of such societies.     

New Historiography for the cultivation of the character of the “new citizen”: Liang Qichao’s ideas of history education and their practice

ABSTRACT

An advocate for modern Chinese historiography, Liang Qichao’s “new historiography” was ideologically quite closely tied to traditional Confucian historiography: his idea of “historiography” was both a form of scholarship for the provision of knowledge, as well as a type of learning for the cultivation of moral character. The fundamental objective of “new historiography” was to use the history of national development and evolution to educate the people, helping them to become nationally conscious “citizens.” However, according to Liang Qichao’s conception of history, the nationalist aspect of “new historiography” ultimately rested in the cultivation of individual character, not in imparting the concept of nationhood. During the movement to “systematize national heritage,” in his practicing of historiography, Liang primarily studied and compiled Chinese academic and intellectual histories, focusing particularly on Confucian history: he interpreted Confucianism and the cream of Chinese scholarship as a kind of “philosophy of life.” Liang’s historiographical practices eventually took shape as a form of moral education to cultivate the leading talents of society when the country was going through a transformation, while in the process signaling his profound repudiation of the empirical emphasis in historical research of the times.     

现代史学语境下的经学认知——顾颉刚的经学批评探析

在经学与中国现代史学的演进中,顾颉刚是一位非常具有研究价值的典型人物,他对经学史、经学研究进行了全方位的评论。他批评汉代经学以通经致用为目的不惜造伪,在推崇宋代疑经辨伪的同时也批评宋儒"舍传求经"的弊病,肯定乾嘉学派实事求是的精神和今文经学家的辨伪之功。在治经理念和方法上,他总结了传统经学研究盲从门户、忽视原始经典文本、恪守"考信于六艺"等不足。顾颉刚以历史发展的眼光看待经学史的演变,经学态度也由激进趋于温和,并试图建立现代经学研究的新范式,其目的是修正传统经学中的种种流弊与缺失,更好地为现代史学研究服务。     

In search of Derek Freeman

Truth’s Fool is a sympathetic biography of Derek Freeman, the anthropologist best known for his scathing critique of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. Hempenstall, a historian, chronicles Freeman’s life and work, including an appraisal of the Mead–Freeman controversy. Hempenstall is interested in Freeman’s ideas, motives, and intentions as well as his personal struggles. He argues that Freeman has been misunderstood, maligned, and vilified in an uncivil “war” among cultural anthropologists. This review examines Hempenstall’s interpretation of Freeman’s personal struggles and his perspective on Freeman’s two books on Mead and Samoa.     

"孔子作《春秋》"说溯源——先秦两汉时期的"春秋"谱系

It is often said that “Confucius composed the Chunqiu 春秋 (The Spring and Autumn Annals) to convey the way of the king.” Scholars have long noticed that before the founding of and during the Han Dynasty the phrase that served as the title of the allegedly Confucian work, “Chunqiu,” was also often used to designate history in general. In what intellectual and textual contexts did the term evolve from something general into a specific concept associated with Confucius? What works or ideas did pre-Han and Han scholars have in mind when discussing Confucius’s Chunqiu and the broader “Chunqiu” canon? Exploring these questions, the study that follows begins by systematically documenting the occurrences of this term in pre-Han and Han texts. It demonstrates that while Mencius was the first person to associate Confucius’s teachings with the Chunqiu, his statement was a solitary and surprising voice in the pre-Han era. Not until the Western Han Dynasty was Confucius widely heralded as the creator of the Chunqiu. But few scholars are aware that Western Han scholars never strictly distinguished the laconic Chunqiu from the detailed historical knowledge preserved in the Gongyang 公羊, Guliang 谷梁, and Zuo 左 commentaries. Furthermore, as the Chunqiu gained canonical status, the phrase still served as a generic term, referring to various historical narratives. Zhang Xuecheng 章学诚 is famous for claiming that “The Six Classics are all history,” and I shall show that in the minds of the people of the Han Dynasty, all historical works were classics.     

Review

In the course of the seventeenth century, ideas concerning the beliefs of Canadian Indians underwent a slow process of modification. Chroniclers at the beginning of the century, influenced by those who, the century before, had flatly declared a number of Indian nations to be “faithless, kingless and lawless,”; continued to describe them pejoratively. However, as they gradually came to see that the Indians were not irreligious, their declarations grew increasingly contradictory. An attentive reading of documents left by missionaries and explorers reveals that towards the middle of the seventeenth century — at a time when, in Europe, conceptions of witchcraft and religion were changing — the observation of American facts became more nuanced. The discovery of a “false religion”; launched the debate as to whether or not the Indians had preserved a secret sentiment of God.

Were the Indians monotheistic or polytheistic? At the beginning of the twentienth century, Paul Radinwasto take up the question and propose a tertium quid — namely that the Indians had practised monolatry or henotheism.     

Was the enlightenment a continuous process from the late Qing to the May Fourth period?

ABSTRACT

Intellectual development from the late Qing to the 1911 Revolution and then to the May Fourth New Culture Movement was generally a continuous process despite various ambivalent and hesitant zigzags. Within this overall continuity, new elements became salient. The new policies promulgated by the republican government soon after the success of the 1911 Revolution created an institutional legacy that gave previously marginal ideas enough legitimacy to enter the mainstream. Changes in “background culture” also resulted in many new themes associated with May Fourth, though these themes were ostensibly similar to those in the late Qing period. The enlightenment of May Fourth endowed the “future” with positive values so that a future-oriented perspective became a fashionable trend in this period.     

4. A PRAGMATIC RESPONSE1

In the years since its twin publication in 2001 (Indian edition) and 2003 (U.S. edition), Textures of Time has attracted a great deal more attention outside the United States than in the American academy. This, we suggest, is because its ideas and approach are rather at odds with the dominant trends in the area of “postcolonial studies.” In this response to three critical essays that engage with the book—by Rama Mantena, Sheldon Pollock, and Christopher Chekuri—we begin by setting out our principal hypotheses as well as the evidentiary structure of the book, which draws mostly on vernacular materials from South India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The former includes the claim that South India between roughly 1600 and 1800 (and thus in the centuries before the consolidation of colonial rule) possessed considerable and diverse historiographical traditions, though these histories came couched in a variety of genres, rendering them difficult for the uninitiated to recognize at first; the latter requires us to develop the significance of the concepts of “texture” as well as of “subgeneric markers” that help distinguish texts with a historical intention from those that are nonhistorical but have the same generic location. Our response then goes on to discuss why theoretical or ?āstric texts in India do not themselves explicitly theorize the distinctions we make. Here, we posit a contrast between “embedded” and “explicated” concepts in the “emic” sphere, suggesting that “texture” belongs to the first category. We explicitly distinguish our views from the poststructuralist (and Barthesian) language adopted by Pollock in his critique of Textures, and the more predictable postcolonial vision of Chekuri. We once more emphasize the need to take the vernacular historiography seriously, and to refine our reading practices, rather than overly depending on normative materials in Sanskrit, or on a prefabricated theoretical schema that derives from a stylized (and impoverished) view of the nature of the transformations produced by colonial rule.