Depoliticized politics, multiple components of hegemony, and the eclipse of the Sixties

Abstract

Abstract Abstract Following the recent trends of globalization and regionalization, the idea of Asia has been revived in political, economic, and cultural fields. This essay examines some of the various uses of this idea in modern East Asian and especially Chinese history. The essay consists of four parts. Part One discusses the derivativeness of the idea of Asia, that is, how this idea developed from modern European history, especially the nineteenth century European narrative of "World History," and it points out how the early modern Japanese "theory of shedding Asia" derived from this narrative. Part Two studies the relationship between the idea of Asia and two forms of Narodism against the background of the Chinese and Russian revolutions – one, exemplified by Russian Narodism, attempted to use Asian particularity to challenge modern capitalism; the other, represented by Sun Yat‐sen, attempted to construct a nation‐state according to a socialist revolutionary program, and to develop agricultural capitalism under the particular social conditions of Asia. Part Three considers the differences and tensions between the "Great Asia‐ism" of Chinese revolutionaries such as Sun and the Japanese idea of Toyo (East Asia), and it discusses the need to overcome the categories of nation‐state and international relations in order to understand the question of Asia. Part Four discusses the need to go beyond early modern maritime‐centered accounts, nationalist frameworks, and Eurocentrism in re‐examining the question of Asia through historical research by focusing on the particular legacies of Asia (such as the tributary system) and the problems of "early modernity." Keywords: Cultural RevolutionChinese Sixtiesdepoliticizationparty‐statestate‐partyideologyhegemonyrepoliticization Notes 1. At the end of 2004, I accepted an invitation from the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Bologna, where I spent three months as a senior researcher. During that time, I had deep and wide‐ranging discussions with Professors Alessandro Russo and Claudia Pozzana, who gave me a number of essays, including 'How to Translate Cultural Revolution' for my perusal. Our discussions touched on many problems, but the Cultural Revolution and depoliticization were the central topics. I benefited considerably from these discussions, and this essay is a product of those discussions, and my later reflections on them. I owe Alessandro Russo and Claudia Pozzana my deep thanks, for without meeting and discussing with them, this essay could not have been written. 2. For another view of depoliticization, see Carl Schmitt's analysis, which links the depoliticization process to the four‐century long history of successive spheres of 'neutralization' in European thought and culture (Schmitt 1993 Schmitt, Carl. 1993. 'The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations', (1929). Telos 96, : 130–143. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) . Schmitt, for whom the central practical political problem in the 1920s was the containment of the rising power of the working class, sought a new form of relationship between the political and the economic, neither laissez‐faire nor social‐democratic. The unsystematic interpenetration of the political and the economic during the 1920s was, from this perspective, a mistake and a danger. Schmitt's concept of 'neutralization,' although specific to Western intellectual and political history, could have utility in other contexts. 3. See preceding footnote.