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Resistance to Modernity and the Logic of Self-Negation as Politics: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui on Lu Xun

Resistance to Modernity and the Logic of Self-Negation as Politics: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui... Lu Xun is perhaps the most studied figure in modern Chinese literature and there has been a great deal of debate about interpreting his work. However, scholars have paid insufficient attention to the way in which readings of Lu Xun serve as a lens from which to examine political interventions in response to global transformations and more specifically to the global logic of capitalism. The path-breaking works of Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui are especially thought provoking in this respect since they each wrote about Lu Xun to intervene in the politics of their times. More specifically Takeuchi and Wang each drew on Lu Xun to develop a new vision of politics at times when narratives and processes associated with the nation-state and capitalism eclipsed critical political practice. Intellectuals in both interwar Japan and post-Mao China stressed an evolutionary vision of modernity with which they criticized their present and immediate past: imperial fascism and feudalism in Japan, and the Cultural Revolution in 1980s and 1990s China. In both the works of Takeuchi and Wang, Lu Xun evinces a resistance to evolutionary or progressive narratives of history. In this essay, I read Takeuchi and Wang's respective interpretations of Lu Xun as responding to the cultural logic of global capitalism. Takeuchi and Wang each appeal to feeling or irrationality to develop a vision of Lu Xun as resisting modernity. For Takeuchi, Lu Xun symbolized not only the Chinese revolution itself, but also a more fundamental defiance of European history and epistemology. Since this history as rationalizing modernity was expanding and encompassed the very formation of the self, Takeuchi argued that resistance implied self-realization through self-negation and that Lu Xun embodied this paradoxical practice. In the mid-1990s, when the neoliberal phase of capitalism was transforming social relations in China, Wang invoked Takeuchi's interpretation of Lu Xun and more explicitly confronted the dynamic of capitalism. In Wang's view, the nature of intellectual production in capitalist society tends to fore-close the possibility of politics. However, he claims that Lu Xun's writings and practices represent a time when Chinese intellectuals were more closely connected to social movements and thus present the possibility of radical transformation. Takeuchi Yoshimi Wang Hui Lu Xun global capitalism Marxism modernity http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Resistance to Modernity and the Logic of Self-Negation as Politics: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui on Lu Xun

positions asia critique , Volume 24 (2) – May 1, 2016

Resistance to Modernity and the Logic of Self-Negation as Politics: Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui on Lu Xun


The works of Lu Xun, perhaps the most studied figure in modern Chinese literature, have been the subject of seemingly endless debate. Given that Lu Xun has been extolled by scholars from widely divergent ideological camps, by examining texts about Lu Xun we often learn as much about the interpreters' historical contexts as we do about Lu Xun's work itself. Put more positively, studying how scholars have interpreted Lu Xun provides a window on how they themselves have responded to the political and intellectual contexts of their times. The path-breaking works of Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910 ­ 77) and Wang Hui (1958 ­ ) are especially thought provoking in this respect since they each wrote about Lu Xun as a way of intervening in the politics of their times. Writing in times as different as wartime Japan and post-Mao China, Takeuchi and Wang each drew on Lu Xun to develop a 24:2 doi 10.1215/10679847-3458709 Copyright 2016 by Duke University Press 24:2 May 2016 new vision of politics to combat narratives and processes associated with the nation-state and capitalism. Takeuchi, who became a prominent intellectual during the postwar period, established a new paradigm in Japanese Lu Xun studies with his work Rojin (Lu Xun), published in 1944. Recently Richard Calichman and Christian Uhl have each produced Western-language monographs on Takeuchi, which analyze his interpretation of Lu Xun in detail. Calichman has contributed to our understanding of Takeuchi's overall thought by delving deeply into how philosophical issues such as "the fundamental passivity of the subject" related to his thought.1 Uhl, on the other hand, has meticulously analyzed how Takeuchi transposed certain themes in Kyoto school philosophy, 2 such as nothingness, into his analysis of Lu Xun. However, neither of these quite grasps the significance of Takeuchi's work on Lu Xun because they fail to inquire into the historical conditions for the possibility of the...
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References (45)

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-3458709
Publisher site
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Abstract

Lu Xun is perhaps the most studied figure in modern Chinese literature and there has been a great deal of debate about interpreting his work. However, scholars have paid insufficient attention to the way in which readings of Lu Xun serve as a lens from which to examine political interventions in response to global transformations and more specifically to the global logic of capitalism. The path-breaking works of Takeuchi Yoshimi and Wang Hui are especially thought provoking in this respect since they each wrote about Lu Xun to intervene in the politics of their times. More specifically Takeuchi and Wang each drew on Lu Xun to develop a new vision of politics at times when narratives and processes associated with the nation-state and capitalism eclipsed critical political practice. Intellectuals in both interwar Japan and post-Mao China stressed an evolutionary vision of modernity with which they criticized their present and immediate past: imperial fascism and feudalism in Japan, and the Cultural Revolution in 1980s and 1990s China. In both the works of Takeuchi and Wang, Lu Xun evinces a resistance to evolutionary or progressive narratives of history. In this essay, I read Takeuchi and Wang's respective interpretations of Lu Xun as responding to the cultural logic of global capitalism. Takeuchi and Wang each appeal to feeling or irrationality to develop a vision of Lu Xun as resisting modernity. For Takeuchi, Lu Xun symbolized not only the Chinese revolution itself, but also a more fundamental defiance of European history and epistemology. Since this history as rationalizing modernity was expanding and encompassed the very formation of the self, Takeuchi argued that resistance implied self-realization through self-negation and that Lu Xun embodied this paradoxical practice. In the mid-1990s, when the neoliberal phase of capitalism was transforming social relations in China, Wang invoked Takeuchi's interpretation of Lu Xun and more explicitly confronted the dynamic of capitalism. In Wang's view, the nature of intellectual production in capitalist society tends to fore-close the possibility of politics. However, he claims that Lu Xun's writings and practices represent a time when Chinese intellectuals were more closely connected to social movements and thus present the possibility of radical transformation. Takeuchi Yoshimi Wang Hui Lu Xun global capitalism Marxism modernity

Journal

positions asia critiqueDuke University Press

Published: May 1, 2016

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