The Chinese national character : from nationhood to individuality / Lung-Kee Sun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sun, Lung-Kee.

Series:

Studies on modern China

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National characteristics, Chinese.

Physical Description:

xx, 299 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, [2002]

Summary:

This unique survey of the evolution of the modern Chinese national character incorporates a rich blend of history and theory as well as nation, gender, and film studies. It begins with the dawn of the concept of "nation" in China at the end of the Imperial period, and follows its development from early Republican China to the present People's Republic, drawing on themes of national identity, "Orientalness," racial evolution and purity, cultural and gender roles, regional animosities, historical impediments, and more. The book also takes up the changing American perceptions of Chinese personality development and gender, using materials from American popular culture.

Contents:

1 The Birth of a "Nation"

The End of an Autocosm

Racial Thinking as a New Episteme

Japan as the "Racial" Model

The Yellow-White Condominium

Liang Qichao's Transition to "Nationalism"

Nation in the Age of Imperialism

Nationhood Defined as an Absence

Decentering Confucius

Retrieving the Han Identity

The Yellow Emperor as the Font of "National" History

The Making of an Estranged Genealogy

2 National Psychology

Europe's Seminal Experience

The Advent of Social Psychology

Historical Race versus Natural Race

The Enigma of "National Psychology"

National Spirit and National Soul

National Psychology and National Education

National Psychology and National Revolution

Will There be a Nation After the Revolution?

Is the Republic Lacking in Character?

Yuan Shikai's Corruption of the Chinese Psychology

The Heyday of National Psychology, and Its Decline

3 Orientalness and Degeneration

Confucianism and the National Psychology

The Problem of "Eastern Civilization"

Evolution's Shadow: Degeneration

Early Chinese Understanding of Heredity

Heredity Against Instinct

Civilization Against Nature

The Specter of Racial Degeneration

The Beginning of Chinese Eugenic Thinking

Eugenics and the Cult of Genius

Civilization as Syphilisation

4 Superman and Underman

China's First Proto-Modernist

The Madman as Visionary

The Doppelganger's Monodrama

The Empathetic Misanthrope

The Chinese Herd

A Chinese Demonology

The Chinese as Sexual Degenerates

The Epigones

5 North and South

Heredity and Environment

The Regional Strategy of Anti-Manchuism

The North and the South as Belligerents

The North-South Cultural Animus

Geography, Temperament, and Race

The North Temperate Zone Theory

Adverse Environment, Bad Heredity, and the "Chosen People"

The Fad of Anthropogeography

Zhang Junjun's Racial Reform Program

Lin Yutang's Pseudo-Regionality

The Persistence of Regional Typologies

Multiple Chinas

A Versatile Schematic

6 "The Rock from a Distant Hill"

A Foretaste of Multiculturalism

Personality as Metonym of Culture

Chinese Childhood and Sexual Growth

The Chinese Reversal of Gender Roles

The "Castrating Mother"

Fear of Passivity and "Depletion"

The Impaired Ability for Aggression Individuation as Parenticidal Drama

The Morbidity of Domineering and Clinging

The Trope of the Ward

The Silence of the Moth

Chinese as Marginal Text

Epilogue Toward a Postnational Age?

The Options We Have

"Three in the Morning, Four in the Evening"

A Hegemony that Compels Diversity

The Postnational Condition and the Ahistorical Individual

Postnational, Posttraumatic, and Postliterate

Another "End of History" Scenario?.

Notes:

"An east gate book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-277) and index.

ISBN:

076560826X

0765608278

OCLC:

46935925