Chinese Thought as Global Theory is an ambitious edited volume based on the central premise that thinking born in local conditions can “produce new and broader insight into social and political conditions elsewhere.” As Leigh Jenco persuasively argues in the introduction, global theory is based on a commitment to the mobility and generality of thought, which can travel across borders in conversation with other communities of argument.
This edited volume focuses on China's role in the production of global thought. The timeliness and necessity of this project is not only because the inclusion of Chinese thought in the canon of theory is long overdue. The stakes of global theory transcend the domain of academic recognition. The exciting potentiality introduced by global theory is that thinking generated in local Chinese contexts may (or may not) be more relevant to illuminating contemporary political dynamics than reading Locke, for example. To put it differently, global theory promises a de-territorialization of the conceptual resources which shape our ability to understand the world, orient ourselves within it, and imagine new political possibilities.
As the volume subtitle suggests, theoretical inquiry is produced in the humanities and social sciences. While the appeal and place of global theory in the humanities is rather obvious, I highly recommend this book to scholars in the social sciences, especially those engaged in empirical data analysis and fieldwork. The questions one formulates in the office may not translate into how people understand and talk about their lives in the area being researched. A literal response to an interview question may harbour associative, nuanced and equivocal meanings that can only be gleaned from the local context. Familiarity with diverse patterns of thinking does not only enrich empirical analyses; it is their indispensable basis.
Theoretical production is also part of China's political system. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) refers to itself as a “learning party” that produces, analyzes and modifies its own theories. The CCP has developed an extensive vocabulary of political concepts and practices, which inherit, modify, and challenge different stands of Chinese thought. Although not its main goal, global theory can also provide insight into how China's political system operates.
The most outstanding chapters are those that attempt to bring ideas generated in China into an emergent sphere of generality. Gloria Davies's chapter “Knowing how to be: the dangers of putting (Chinese) thought into action” is exemplary in this regard. Davies argues that theoretical inquiry in China is a spiritual pursuit aimed at moral self-cultivation and an abiding concern with affairs of the state. The Chinese preoccupation with how to be is a powerful reminder that thinking is always about being in relation to the world. In terms of social scientific inquiry, Davies's argument limns the complex relationship between intellectual production, patterns of conduct, and state power in contemporary China. Timothy Cheek's chapter, “Attitudes in action: Maoism as emotional political theory,” develops a general understanding of the role of emotional and cognitive dispositions in the “normative and motivational forces of political life and in political theory” (p. 90) from the history of Maoist theory and practice. According to Cheek, Mao recognized that political judgments are rooted in embodied experiences, which combine cognitive and affective dispositions. From this insight, it follows that attitudes (taidu) are malleable and subject to modification, cultivation and manipulation. In addition to the theoretical questions it raises, Cheek's chapter casts light on today's CCP, which has never abandoned the Maoist understanding that political power both shapes and maintains itself through people's everyday thoughts, emotions and attitudes.
The main weakness of the edited volume is that as an integral whole it falls short of its goal to generate new global theories from the basis of local Chinese contexts. For example, Guanjun Wu's chapter “A (psycho)analysis of China's new nationalism” offers a critical analysis of the obscene and hidden fantasies that underpin publicly acceptable articulations of Chinese nationalism via a reading of Lacan and Žižek. Although Wu's argument is compelling on its own, it does not generate new theories from the basis of Chinese contexts. Similarly, Michael W. Dowdle's chapter “China's present as the world's future: China and ‘rule of law’ in a post-Fordist world” is a fascinating argument about China's transition to a post-Fordist regulatory state, with a discussion of China's New Left intellectuals tacked on at the end. I also wonder whether the promise of “generalizable knowledge” is a scaled down and anodyne version of the aspiration of universality and could benefit from being phrased in more robust terms.
Overall, I strongly recommend this edited volume to anyone interested in finding new resources for conceptual thinking. It is a salutary intervention heightened by a world perilously retreating into parochialism and xenophobia. Our political futures depend on such new conceptual experimentation to guide us out of the darkness of present contradictions.
