The Mirage of China: Anti-Humanism, Narcissism, and Corporeality of the Contemporary World

by Xin Liu

Today’s world is one marked by the signs of digital capitalism and global capitalist expansion, and China is increasingly being integrated into this global system of production and consumption. As a result, China’s immediate material impact is now felt almost everywhere in the world; however, the significance and process of this integration is far from understood. This study shows how the a priori categories of statistical reasoning came to be re-born and re-lived in the People’s Republic - as essential conditions for the possibility of a new mode of knowledge and governance. From the ruins of the Maoist revolution China has risen through a mode of quantitative self-objectification. As the author argues, an epistemological rift has separated the Maoist years from the present age of the People’s Republic, which appears on the global stage as a mirage. This study is an ethnographic investigation of concepts - of the conceptual forces that have produced and been produced by - two forms of knowledge, life, and governance. As the author shows, the world of China, contrary to the common view, is not the Chinese world; it is a symptomatic moment of our world at the present time.

222 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[风花 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5星 高开低走的一本书，前几章很有意思，尤其序言里的田野记录，不过越往后越是理论堆积，也越往后越无聊，虽然一些论断其实很有意思（就像是结尾呼吁当代的社会学/人类学学者还是要读些黑格尔和马克思，尤其是他们关于矛盾与辨证的历史哲学的思想），但我很难把它定义为一本人类学著作。
但作者无论是对文革，对土改的“哲学化研究”，都缺乏材料（都不要求是史料）的支撑、甚至出现了和追求物质与发展的后毛时代相比，“毛时代是人文主义”的论断。不过抛开这些对毛时代的“玫瑰色幻想”，刘新的论断本身还是合理的，尤其是放在21世纪初的视域下。
毛时代的历史发展是一种质性的变化，历史由阶段构成，一个阶段比另一个阶段更发达，而21世纪初的中国，未来是自我实现的，统计指标变成历史的隐喻，未来的到来就是指标数字的增长，发展就是增长（这和汪晖对21世纪初的批判类似），而没有办法想象“alternative path”。