“Enlightenment” and “China” in translation: for a critique of Chinese reason

• Main Authors: Julien Quelennec, 朱利恩
• Other Authors: Lin, Shufen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/52q6vb

博士 === 國立交通大學 === 社會與文化研究所 === 107 === To put “China” and “Enlightenment” in translation means to question the contemporary regime of truth conditioning the representation of their historical (non-)relation. In this thesis, we raise the question of the dispute involved in the setting up of their discursive articulation. The hegemony of the Western regime of global knowledge production and exchange rendered the Chinese reverse angle view on Enlightenment invisible. We expose here the discursive conditions under which Western knowledge of China contributed in keeping the “Chinese Enlightenment” illegibile. Our will to think “Enlightenment” with “China” is triggered by the depoliticization of knowledge production inherent in the condition of the contemporary “global modernity”. Postcolonial studies engaged a re-politicization of knowledge production, but we will see that they do not provide us with a paradigm for the revaluation of the discursive history we propose to engage. In order to decolonize “Chinese reason” we must deconstruct the representation of an essential opposition between the West and China and the way it structures discursive arrangements. The leading thread of the three disparate chapters presented in this thesis is the attempt to delineate the historical institution of a difference between a native (Chinese) and a foreign (Western) knowledge of China. The first chapter deals with the so-called European “encounter” with Chinese knowledge during the 17th and 18th century, and questions the dominant sinological self-narrative praising Jesuits endeavours against Enlightenment's imaginary reinvention of China. The second chapter consists in a genealogical analysis of the discourse of “China studies”, focusing on the questionable integration of China within the scope of Orientalism and the setting up of a mechanism of colonial denial in Western knowledge production. The last chapter finally discusses the Chinese Enlightenment as a potential “counter-effectuation” involving both imitation and elicitation from the Western experience of modernity. In this thesis, we do not propose to speak for the Chinese Enlightenment, but to bring to light how it is posed in a relation of exclusion and/or inclusion to Western self-referential appropriation of the discourse on modernity.