TY - JOUR

T1 - Situated Interpretations of Nationalism, Imperialism, and Cosmopolitanism

T2 - Revisiting the Writings of Liang in the Encounter Between Worlds

AU - Zhang, Chenchen

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The idea of the nation has been considered to have delivered political modernity from its native Europe to the rest of the world. The same applies, though more implicitly, to those paradoxes inherent to the nationalist ideology – that between universalism and national particularity and that between liberal nationalism and imperialism. This article seeks to complicate these theses by looking at the interpretations of nationalism, imperialism, and cosmopolitanism provided by Liang Qichao, one of the most influential Chinese intellectuals in early twentieth century, during his exile in Japan when increasingly exposed to the encounter between worlds. This reading also engages with the wider debates on modernity/modernities in non-Western societies through showing that neither the “consumers of modernity” approach nor the “creative adaptations” approach can be easily applied here. I argue that the various tensions, contingencies and historical situatedness in Liang's accounts of the nation-state structure represent and constitute the paradox of the structure itself. They also shed light on contemporary debates about the limits of our political imagination in the misnamed “global politics” beyond the false opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

AB - The idea of the nation has been considered to have delivered political modernity from its native Europe to the rest of the world. The same applies, though more implicitly, to those paradoxes inherent to the nationalist ideology – that between universalism and national particularity and that between liberal nationalism and imperialism. This article seeks to complicate these theses by looking at the interpretations of nationalism, imperialism, and cosmopolitanism provided by Liang Qichao, one of the most influential Chinese intellectuals in early twentieth century, during his exile in Japan when increasingly exposed to the encounter between worlds. This reading also engages with the wider debates on modernity/modernities in non-Western societies through showing that neither the “consumers of modernity” approach nor the “creative adaptations” approach can be easily applied here. I argue that the various tensions, contingencies and historical situatedness in Liang's accounts of the nation-state structure represent and constitute the paradox of the structure itself. They also shed light on contemporary debates about the limits of our political imagination in the misnamed “global politics” beyond the false opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Intellectual history

KW - Nationalism

KW - cosmopolitism

KW - Modernity

KW - multiple modernities

KW - Postcolonialism

KW - East Asia

KW - China

KW - Liang Qichao

U2 - 10.1111/johs.12058

DO - 10.1111/johs.12058

M3 - Journal article

VL - 27

SP - 343

EP - 360

JO - Journal of Historical Sociology

JF - Journal of Historical Sociology

SN - 0952-1909

IS - 3

ER -