At Least I'm Un-Making Progress

Palmer's Lodge, Hampstead, London, (June 2010)

Daruvala, Susan. Zhou Zuoren and An Alternative Chinese Response to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

I revisited the first chapter of Susan Daruvala’s book about Zhou Zuoren to get a sense of how she writes the “theoretical frameworks” that I have been told more than once is my greatest weakness.

“Nationalism and Modernity,” the central section of the chapter, elaborates on the antagonistic forces that Zhou Zuoren’s philosophy opposes. A careful reading of this 11,000-word piece was more than a little xingku, and ultimately left me unsatisfied because it does not give any role to literature. But I’ll bracket that criticism for the next few paragraphs to summarize what this work actually offers: a passionate response to a set of readings that shows one student’s effort to understand why and how nationalism dominates modern societies.

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Daruvala first sets out to set as the object of her concern the emergence of the nation-state, which occurs after the growth of long-distance trade and big cities. The word “modernity” describes this emergence, but is applies equally well to a new self-consciousness and capacity for reflection: how do we connect the two?

For one thing, the emergence of the nation-state is the emergence of people who see themselves as parts of a greater whole. They become willing to live and die for their country. This sentiment spreads out of England in the 18th century into other European nations, and their colonies.

But if some are willing to die for their country, inevitably others came to question whether this was the best practice. Perhaps there are times when one should ask not what one can do for one’s country, but what one’s country can do for one? And perhaps if the answer the country gives is “I shall make you into a productive tool,” then the contract between citizen and state may begin to look unfair. The Holocaust of course constitutes the extreme example of how unfair this may become.

For Liah Greenfeld, it is particularly important to understand that German elites were driven to create a nation-state out of a ressentiment, a sense of inferiority, against the more successful English. One wonders if they ever considered that the English were helped along themselves by their fear of Napoleon! In any case, we must remember that in addition to ressentiment, pure greed is a major factor driving the formation of nation-states; if we picture capital as a thing, we can look back on history to see the English, Germans, etc. carefully structuring the state and the nation to better serve it.

Books and print media have the key role of disseminating the discourse of nationalism: only with the help of books and newspapers could the English amplify their sense of Englishness; that they also became racists along the way is an inevitable feature of the rhetoric used in this discourse. Daruvala does not spell out this rhetoric, but I am reminded of the concept so popular at the moment (2010), that it is easy and efficient to build group identity by identifying the outsiders.

I lament this rhetorical pattern, which is so completely common even on the news reports I’ve heard just today, but I am also fascinated by its power and versatility. To see this, one only has to consider the emergence of nationalist discourse in the colonies: elite colonial subjects always want to become their masters: from the English, we have India.

Looking at the colonies is useful because it allows us to see that in the discourse of nationalism, “nation” and “modern” mean much the same thing. Nation-builders hoped that they would become modern, and hence more rational, and hence more fully free and rational; they did not see that they actually were making themselves into tools for the service of capital. Gradually a “stance of disengaged reason” makes a person begin to see herself as merely a part of the whole unable to change the whole. (Scientific discourse encourages this “stance of disengaged reason.”)

Eventually, the understanding that the parts ought to leave the whole alone becomes a moral claim. This, Daruvala will go on to claim, is what happened in China during and after the May Fourth Movement.

Meanwhile, nation-builders continue to think that having a modern nation will make them rational. As Paul Ricoeur argues, the drive to be ever more rational is a feature of humans, but goes awry when they build structures that serve capital, instead of attending to “what is most living and creative in them.” Another Frenchman, Patrick Tort, points again to the rhetorical pattern of evolution and progress which is a crucial part a larger “para-scientific ideology.” Just as we serve capital, we have come to serve science and rationalism. The unfortunate consequence of this service is amnesia, as Renan has said: “Forgetting...is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.” (I suppose the way this works is as follows: I can play video games, what use have I of chess? I must form a nation-state, what use have I of Catholicism or Confucianism? Renan’s point was apparently directed at the French, who say “We have France, what use have we now of Spanish-speakers?”)

“Progress,” tied as it is to rationalism, pictures civilization as a warring party with nature. To identifying “civilization” with nations is to picture yourself fighting with other nations. Alternatively, civilization could be “open structures” separate from nations, which might allow more room civilizatons to co-exist.

Perhaps, since the nation has evolved as the organization best-suited to grow capital, that opposing the nation would help oppose capital? Tagore certainly thought so.

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Despite the eloquence of Tagore’s anti-national vision (apparently he told a crowd of Japanese in 1916, “The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with the cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power called the Nation.”), my objection to Daruvala’s account is that neither she nor Tagore have given any hint that “the Nation” is the source of the greed that drives civilization to care for the needs of capital rather than the needs of people. I think I see what she is driving at, however: if we can awaken ourselves to the fact of our slavery, we can begin to fix the problem. If we can remember the older habits, like filial piety, that make us serve people, that can help displace the service of capital. This is somehow a larger umbrella into which I can place the lessons of the “queer art of failure” and “against recovery” from recent readings. But all lack a real vision -- so far. I’ll be patient as I continue to study Daruvala with great care.