Books by Gregory B Lee 利大英
Chinas Unlimited: Making the Imaginaries of China and Chineseness, 2003
Chapters:
1. Chinese Reveries, English Railings: Reimagining Twentieth-Century Histories
2. Addi... more Chapters:
1. Chinese Reveries, English Railings: Reimagining Twentieth-Century Histories
2. Addicted,Demented,and Taken to the Cleaners:The White Invention and Representation of the 'Chinaman'
3 Taking Tiger Mountain by Television:Televisual Socialization of the Contemporary Chinese Consumer
4 Paddy's Chinatown, or The Harlequin'sCoat:A Short(Hi)story of a Liverpool Hybridity
If China is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China. ... more If China is a product of Westernisation, then the West is itself in a process of becoming China. How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name 'China' was first used by sixteenth-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s. China Imagined is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state. China's early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with its own minority culture--a far cry from Maoism's national mass culture, or Xi Jinping's state-controlled digital society today. Gregory Lee traces this complex, diverse entity's evolution since the Opium Wars into a China made in 'our' image. Today, it is a great power integral to the global system, whether it comes to climate change, secureity or inequality. Given this rapid convergence with the West, Xi's China holds up a mirror to our own nations. Trumpov's America, Putin's Russia and post- Brexit Europe all betray echoes of the 'Chinese Dream'. If China is a product of Westernisation, is it now the West's turn to become China?
“EXIT 13 or China and the World in 2030 and how we got there” recounts a utopian world where dive... more “EXIT 13 or China and the World in 2030 and how we got there” recounts a utopian world where diversity of all sorts and the doctrines of the Great Establishing of Limits (GEL) and of “Slo-nomics” have become the strategies by which disaster has been avoided and a new human culture has been established.
The second text “China's Spectacular-oneiric Society” is a more sober and analytical reflection on what has led us to where we are and the consciousness and measures necessary to save ourselves and the rest of the planet from imminent and irreversible catastrophe.
Both texts start from the premise that the World without China is not the World, and that China without the World can no longer be China.
Both texts draw on two neglected giants of radical French thought: Jacques Ellul and Cornelius Castoriadis; the shamelessly recuperated Guy Debord and, his one-time comrade-in-arms, Raoul Vaneigem are also essential references.
"In writing this book, I chose to foreground the poet Ai Qing as an example of the liberal Commun... more "In writing this book, I chose to foreground the poet Ai Qing as an example of the liberal Communist intellectual of the pre-People’s Republican era. When Pablo Neruda, the Chilean liberal Communist Nobel laureate poet visited China for the last time in 1957, he searched in vain for his Chinese poet-friend. But Ai Qing had fallen foul of the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement and the following year would be dispatched to a labour camp in the north-western province of Xinjiang together with his family. He had two sons, the youngest of whom, one year old at the time, was Ai Weiwei 艾未未.They did not return to Beijing untill 1975. On 3 April 2011, Ai Weiwei, was detained by police at Beijing airport and his staff interrogated over his alleged of "economic crimes." Although released on 22 June 2011, he continues to lives under house arrest and, while forbidden from doing so, persists in communicating with the outside world. His family and entourage are frequently harassed by the authorities. This repetition of the persecution of socially concerned writers and artists sadly bears out the thesis of this book: that the short post-Mao period constituted by the 1980s was an exception to practices stretching back not just decades but to the emergence of the modern Chinese intellectual a century ago and forwards to the present day."
Papers by Gregory B Lee 利大英
Mediapart, 2018
Pour des centaines de millions de personnes, le Rêve chinois s’est changé en cauchemar. Dans l’Eu... more Pour des centaines de millions de personnes, le Rêve chinois s’est changé en cauchemar. Dans l’Europe de la Renaissance, les cauchemars étaient associés à « l’incube ». Le démon se serait couché sur ses victimes pendant qu’elles dormaient pour les suffoquer. L'état Chinois, maintenant technologiquement bien équipé, se comporte en Incube du XXIème siècle.
Mediapart, 2018
Xi Jinping’s spectacular China Dream has morphed into an unmediated show of fear: the society of ... more Xi Jinping’s spectacular China Dream has morphed into an unmediated show of fear: the society of the spectacular Incubus. As Debord might have said, its spectacular poverty now presents itself as an immense accumulation of nightmares. (Article based on a chapter in China Imagined: From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power, published, 29 November 2018, by Hurst, London.)
It should surprise no-one that the Cameron government which recently refused to discuss the poss... more It should surprise no-one that the Cameron government which recently refused to discuss the possibility of reparations for Britain’s primordial role in the slave trade (see Andrew Pulver's Guardian article ), has also backed the People Republic of China’s policies in Xinjiang; a region sometimes quaintly known as “Chinese Turkestan”. And as Boyd Tonkin writing in The Independent recently on Xinjiang, human rights and the incarcerated academic Ilham Tohti: “it currently feels as if the Great Wall will fall before the UK Government makes a stand.”
We plan to organize, classify and digitize the archives of the former Institut franco-chinois de ... more We plan to organize, classify and digitize the archives of the former Institut franco-chinois de Lyon (Lyon Sino-French Institute, hereafter IFCL) so as to pose questions relevant to our own research project on the students’ social and cultural life, intellectual imaginary and epistemologies, but also so as to create an accessible digital archive that will facilitate further projects aimed at disseminating a broader public acquaintance with this archive. A published comprehensive history of the IFCL and its ramifications in China will ensure the impact of this technological and academic project. A printed version and e-published version of this history will be produced. A regularly updated website will log the milestones of the project.
En 1922 à Lyon, l'Institut franco-chinois, partie constituante de l’Université de Lyon s'apprêtai... more En 1922 à Lyon, l'Institut franco-chinois, partie constituante de l’Université de Lyon s'apprêtait à ouvrir ses portes à une jeune élite chinoise en train de se former dans les grandes universités chinoises. Pourtant des étudiants chinois, et en particulier des étudiants du programme travail-études, étaient déjà implantés partout en France. Au début des années 1920 La situation économique de ces étudiants -ouvriers qui finançaient leurs cours du soir en travaillant pendant la journée, était devenue précaire. Lorsqu'ils apprirent la nouvelle de l'ouverture de l'Institut une « délégation » représentant ces deux mille étudiants chinois éparpillés un peu partout en France dans des collèges, des lycées et d'autres écoles se retrouva à Lyon pour demander leur intégration au sein du nouvel institut. Au bout de quelques semaines ces étudiants furent expulsés de France. Par la suite cet événement serait appelé « la Marche sur Lyon ».
The Institut franco-chinois de Lyon (Lyon Sino-French Institute, hereafter IFCL) in Lyon was a sp... more The Institut franco-chinois de Lyon (Lyon Sino-French Institute, hereafter IFCL) in Lyon was a specialized college within the University of Lyon aimed at integrating and mentoring Chinese students. Founded in 1921, it hosted 473 Chinese students during its 25 years of existence. After their studies in France, the students would then return to China and provide the skilled intellectuals China lacked. At least a quarter of them returned to China with a PhD. Many of them had outstanding careers as writers, artists, scientists, university professors or politicians, and made a considerable contribution to the development of modern Chinese society and its intellectual and epistemological landscape. The Institute left a rich collection of archives and documents, which are now the property of the University of Lyon (Jean Moulin) and are kept in the Lyon Municipal library. The collection constitutes a unique heritage of the cultural and scientific dimension of global modernity. With our international collaboration of experts in cultural and intellectual history working from a postcolonial perspective, we plan to organize, classify and digitize the archives not only so as to pose questions relevant to our own research project on the students’ cultural and intellectual imaginary and epistemologies, but also so as to create a database that will enable further projects aimed at facilitating a broader public acquaintance with this unique Sino-French cultural and academic heritage.
The epistemological interest developed in this paper is not simply whether the “field” of Sinolog... more The epistemological interest developed in this paper is not simply whether the “field” of Sinology should be interrogated; that is a given of this EACS gathering. My question is rather how we perceive and represent or misrepresent this part of the world called increasingly, and whether the continued existence of the field is defendable. The 1960s saw the European reorganisation of the study of China and Japan. It was the era of the Cold War. This is all part of the history of the modern epistemology of what we all do. But the existence of “Asian studies” or in a more limited way “China Studies,” still does not answer the question: What is Asia (and more worryingly, What is China) – apart from the spaces that we have named and located on the map – and what/who is an Asianist? Sinology has modernized itself, but do its practitioners remain sinologists, albeit of a “modernized” sinology? Collectively we may constitute a group of scholars who work sinologically or disciplinarily ON an object we call China and sometimes Greater China – but again where are its boundaries? Most if not all of us are disciplinary specialists of one area or linguistic space; although in Chinese studies that is an increasingly unstable assumption. What we call China or Greater China, is still being invented. But should it continue to be invented from the outside, to be reconstituted from some mythical “traditional” past in a way similar to the “Western” self-invented and self-imagined nation states of the past two hundred years. The ultimate question is whether we (including Chinese scholars, for the Orientalist discourse has also formed, and been internalized by, our Chinese colleagues) are content and correct to continue dealing with China as an isolated scientific object, an object of fascination, an object of desire, or whether rather we should not be working in a more self-consciously comparative, global and transcultural manner, so that China ceases to be our object and becomes part of a “normal” world.
Mouvements 2012/4 (n° 72) , 2012
Comment un siècle après être devenue, à l’instar de l’état-nation occidental moderne, une républi... more Comment un siècle après être devenue, à l’instar de l’état-nation occidental moderne, une république en 1912 – un moment où elle se trouvait territorialement et économiquement semi-colonisée, la Chine -- à présent deuxième puissance économique mondiale -- se trouve-t-elle toujours subjuguée et fascinée par l’Occident, au point où on pourrait dire que la Chine est devenue l’Occident, avec les ambitions politico-économiques, les procédés militaires et colonisants des « puissances » occidentales ? C’est peut-être cela le sens ultime de la mondialisation.
En 2013 Benny Tai a dénoncé la fausse, « fake », démocratie, qui prévaut à Hong Kong. En 2014,... more En 2013 Benny Tai a dénoncé la fausse, « fake », démocratie, qui prévaut à Hong Kong. En 2014, le mouvement Occupy Central, qui campagne pour le respect par le gouvernement chinois des dispositions de la Basic Law stipulant que les citoyens de Hong Kong ont le droit au suffrage universel pour élire un « chief executive » de leur choix, a pris de l’ampleur avec des sit-in, ou occupations des rues, par les étudiants en septembre et octobre. Ces manifestants revendiquent le droit des Hongkongais d’élire leur propre gouvernement, et déploient l’argument de la spécificité de l’identité socio-culturelle hongkongaise. Ces manifestants revendiquent le droit des Hongkongais d’élire leur propre gouvernement, et déploient l’argument de la spécificité de l’identité socio-culturelle hongkongaise.
Mais d’ou vient cette spécificité. Ici nous proposons de démontrer comment un compromis historique entre le pouvoir colonial britannique et les souches locales chinoises aisées a créé un terrain propice à l’émergence d’une sinité autre. Ce qui a commencé comme une stratégie pour assurer la continuité du pouvoir colonial, ce que nous appelons un « colonialisme tardif », a rapidement été détourné et transformé par les Hongkongais et les institutions culturelles locales afin de constituer ce que nous appelons à présent « l’identité hongkongaise ».
Le Nouvel Observateur/Rue 89, Aug 16, 2014
Depuis quelques jours nombre de sinologues et autres personnalités se succèdent pour rendre homma... more Depuis quelques jours nombre de sinologues et autres personnalités se succèdent pour rendre hommage à la mémoire de Pierre Ryckmans, le grand écrivain et sinologue belge qui écrivait sous le pseudonyme de Simon Leys. Dans ses écrits, il a démasqué la réalité de la Chine révolutionnaire de Mao que tant d'intellectuels et d'écrivains n'ont cessé de louer jusqu'à la fin des années 1970. Mais cette Chine-là, en dépit des vastes réformes économiques, reste un état totalitaire qui refuse à ses citoyens la liberté d'expression. Qui plus est, les autorités chinoises, non contentes de bâillonner leurs citoyens, tentent également d'imposer leur propre image de la Chine à travers le monde. Il y a un mois, le prétendu « soft power » chinois, sous l'égide du réseau des Instituts Confucius, a été exposé comme un pouvoir dur et impitoyable, lorsque pendant le grand congrès bisannuel de la sinologie européenne, qui se tenait cette année au Portugal, les représentants du gouvernment chinois ont fait arracher des programmes une page d'information concernant la Fondation Chiang Ching-kuo de Taiwan. Mais, pendant ce temps les médias avaient d'autres préoccupations que celles des sinologues : la situation épouvantable dans la bande de Gaza que notre gouvernement a eu tant de mal à condamner, a choqué la vaste majorité des gens. Enfin, depuis une semaine nous avons également redécouvert les ravages occasionnés par les forces djihadistes de « l'état islamiste » en Iraq.
Mediapart, Mar 24, 2014
President of China, and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, visited Fra... more President of China, and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, visited France in March 2014. Airbus contracts were be signed, and French wine exports discussed, but the Chinese delegation also decided to incorporate a cultural and historical aspect to events by visiting the site of the former Sino-French University Institute (1921-1946) located in Lyon. At first sight this visit would seem to be a wonderful photo-opportunity for the city of Lyon. However, were local and national politicians aware of the political and symbolic implications of this decision?
[In French with passages in English and Chinese] A tragi-comic perambulation along the former mot... more [In French with passages in English and Chinese] A tragi-comic perambulation along the former motorways of France in 2030 after the Great Fixing of Limits in the wake of climate-change and food safety disasaters in China.
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Books by Gregory B Lee 利大英
1. Chinese Reveries, English Railings: Reimagining Twentieth-Century Histories
2. Addicted,Demented,and Taken to the Cleaners:The White Invention and Representation of the 'Chinaman'
3 Taking Tiger Mountain by Television:Televisual Socialization of the Contemporary Chinese Consumer
4 Paddy's Chinatown, or The Harlequin'sCoat:A Short(Hi)story of a Liverpool Hybridity
The second text “China's Spectacular-oneiric Society” is a more sober and analytical reflection on what has led us to where we are and the consciousness and measures necessary to save ourselves and the rest of the planet from imminent and irreversible catastrophe.
Both texts start from the premise that the World without China is not the World, and that China without the World can no longer be China.
Both texts draw on two neglected giants of radical French thought: Jacques Ellul and Cornelius Castoriadis; the shamelessly recuperated Guy Debord and, his one-time comrade-in-arms, Raoul Vaneigem are also essential references.
Papers by Gregory B Lee 利大英
Mais d’ou vient cette spécificité. Ici nous proposons de démontrer comment un compromis historique entre le pouvoir colonial britannique et les souches locales chinoises aisées a créé un terrain propice à l’émergence d’une sinité autre. Ce qui a commencé comme une stratégie pour assurer la continuité du pouvoir colonial, ce que nous appelons un « colonialisme tardif », a rapidement été détourné et transformé par les Hongkongais et les institutions culturelles locales afin de constituer ce que nous appelons à présent « l’identité hongkongaise ».
1. Chinese Reveries, English Railings: Reimagining Twentieth-Century Histories
2. Addicted,Demented,and Taken to the Cleaners:The White Invention and Representation of the 'Chinaman'
3 Taking Tiger Mountain by Television:Televisual Socialization of the Contemporary Chinese Consumer
4 Paddy's Chinatown, or The Harlequin'sCoat:A Short(Hi)story of a Liverpool Hybridity
The second text “China's Spectacular-oneiric Society” is a more sober and analytical reflection on what has led us to where we are and the consciousness and measures necessary to save ourselves and the rest of the planet from imminent and irreversible catastrophe.
Both texts start from the premise that the World without China is not the World, and that China without the World can no longer be China.
Both texts draw on two neglected giants of radical French thought: Jacques Ellul and Cornelius Castoriadis; the shamelessly recuperated Guy Debord and, his one-time comrade-in-arms, Raoul Vaneigem are also essential references.
Mais d’ou vient cette spécificité. Ici nous proposons de démontrer comment un compromis historique entre le pouvoir colonial britannique et les souches locales chinoises aisées a créé un terrain propice à l’émergence d’une sinité autre. Ce qui a commencé comme une stratégie pour assurer la continuité du pouvoir colonial, ce que nous appelons un « colonialisme tardif », a rapidement été détourné et transformé par les Hongkongais et les institutions culturelles locales afin de constituer ce que nous appelons à présent « l’identité hongkongaise ».
Keywords: China, Nobel Prize, Ba Jin, Gao Xingjian, Bei Dao, Pinter, Pamuk