DEBATES OVER COLONIAL MODERNITY IN EAST ASIA AND ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE
2012; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09502386.2012.711006
ISSN1466-4348
Autores Tópico(s)Australian History and Society
ResumoAbstract The introduction of the term 'colonial modernity' in historiography of the early 1990s provided an alternative to 'modernization theory' and an international focus to writing about Japanese and other imperialisms on the China mainland. This neologistic phrase also raised many other questions: the historicity of the national focus versus 'regionalism' in Asian Studies; the role imperialist social science in US Asian studies; the project of globalizing historiography and what units of comparison – value, nation, subalterneity, etc. – were viable in global studies; and the importance of ephemera and immanent critique in colonial modernist studies. Here the essay takes earlier debates about colonial modernity and modernization theory as a given foundation. The further step is to take seriously questions of selling, buying, investing, marketing and advertising under colonial modern conditions during the mobilization of international capital into aggressive corporate form. This historical focus is a means of opening to scrutiny ephemera and its likely role among people who were reinventing their given historical conditions, creating a material and intellectually viable colonial modernity. Thus, the essay begins with a discussion of the 'other scene of use value.' A particularly artful mise en abyme of a modern girl advertising shows the efficacy of this 'other scene' as a speculative, psychoanalytically coherent, fantasy form of intellection that may have prefigured and predisposed future, compulsory, class-striated modes of consumption and regimes of modern pleasure. The avenue that 'other scenes of use value' open to historiography may enhance the way the term colonial modernity is used and defined. The essay's general argument thus seeks to illustrate some of the stalemates facing the colonial modernity debate and to propose another possible line for historiographic work. Keywords: colonial modernityother scene of use valueAndersonMeyer & Co.AMCOGeneral Electric in China Acknowledgement I want to thank Ruri Ito and C.B. Claiborne for their criticism in the revision process. Notes 1. See http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_633136db0100i6b9.html 38— (Discovering the builders of modern China 38 – Andersen, Meyer & Company) for detailed chronology of the founding of Andersen Company (), Andersen Meyer (from , transformed into ) and the Andersen, Meyer's relationship to General Electric (). Also see http://www.flickr.com/photos/stchatterbox/3106299951/ for a photograph of the 1921 AMCO-GE building. See http://www.disappearingcorners.com/former-building-of-anderson-meyer-company-inc/ for Li Xueqiang assertion that AMCO was GE's sole operating agent in China. See http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/images/ge-mcrr.pdf for listing of Andersen Meyer under GE's category of Foreign Offices and Associated Companies in the August 1926 magazine GE Magazine. http://www.chinaeol.net/bell-green/ for 'GE and GE in China,' by Ellen L.W. Proctor, Director & Counsel, Environment, Health & Safety, Asia, GE Corporate Environmental Programs, 2004, which asserts that GE formally acquired Andersen Meyer Trading Company in 1925 for the purpose of doing electrical installation in China. http://edison.rutgers.edu/list.htm notes that AMCO was only the more successful corporate arm for General Electric's electricity and electric implement markets in China. The earliest company acquired for that purpose appears to have been Frazar and Co., which Thomas A. Edison's agents established to sell phonographs and lighting in Japan and China beginning in the early 1880s. Christopher Bo Bramsen offers further details. 2. 'The use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities,' Karl Marx, Capital, chapter 1. I take inspiration from this statement. 3. Except, as I have argued in a manuscript In the Event of Women inasmuch as the epistemic frame of thinking as such was popular sociology in this era, so that every subject in all forms of representation are, in the colonial modern period, claimed to be 'in society.' The claim of society is beholden to the set of arguments forwarded in the social sciences, and particularly in the queen of the social sciences which is philosophic sociology. This section of the book will appear in differences as 'Event, Excess, Abyss.' 4. Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 19. In Zizek's thinking other scene has a second element, an unconscious 'theatre,' where modern personhood is staged psychically. I think he is correct to emphasize the theatrical element of the unconscious. 5. See Fitzgerald (1997 Fitzgerald, J. 1997. Awakening China, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press 1997. [Google Scholar]). 6. See Barlow (1997 Barlow , T. 1997 Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia , Durham , Duke University Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). 7. See Miyajima (2001 Miyajima , H. 2001 Viewpoints on Colonial Modernity: Korea and Japan ( ; 2004 ), G-W. Shin and M. Robinson , Colonial Modernity in Korea , Cambridge , Harvard/Hallem . [Google Scholar]). I want to thank the Modern Girl and Colonial Modernity in East Asia workgroup, particularly Ruri Ito, for locating and helping me understand the Miyajima book. 8. See Bickers and Henriot (2000 Bickers, R. and Henriot, C. 2000. New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953, 2Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 2). 9. See Dube and Banerjee-Dube (2006 Dube, S. and Banerjee-Dube, I. 2006. Unbecoming Modern: Colonialism, Modernity, Colonial Modernities, New Delhi: Social Science Press. [Google Scholar]). 10. Henry's foundation is the work of theoretically inclined positions scholars Miriam Silverberg, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Alan Christy, and Leo Ching as well as Ogumi Eiji and Louise Young (see Henry, 2005 Henry, T. A. 2005. Sanitizing Empire: Japanese Articulations of Korean Otherness and the Construction of Early Colonial Seoul, 1905–1919. Journal of Asian Studies, 64(3): 639–675. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], pp. 639–675). '[Although] their specific discursive and practical inflections in the colonial setting requires, as [Alan] Christy has advised, that one not collapse 'the very real distinctions of location within the hierarchy of power established by Japanese imperialism (1997, p. 163).' (p. 641) 11. See Kikuchi (2007 Kikuchi , Y. 2007 Introduction , in Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan , Y. Kichuchi , Honolulu , University of Hawaii Press , pp. 1 – 20 . [Google Scholar]). These scholars have also changed things around, arguing that 'From the framework of colonial modernity, the central theoretical notion of "refraction"' has emerged. This volume focuses on the transfer and appropriation of modernity …. Refraction is used here in the sense of Kan Kang-Jung's expression 'refracted Orientalism.' In physics, 'the refraction of light describes a change of direction, an altered course, taken by a beam of light. In this volume we use refraction to refer to the transferable nature of the ideas and practices of Euro American colonialism and in particular, Japanese colonialism, which itself had adopted and refracted those of Western colonialism.' (p. 9) And they confirm that 'Refraction refers mainly to the transfer of ideas from the original source, but importantly it also encapsulates the actual process by which these ideas are "bent" or modified during the course of transfer.' What the papers achieve is a fusion of art historical critique and a clear exposition of the political ideologies shaping core strategies of representation: 'nature,' travel, modernity, 'the South,' architecture, folk arts and so on. 12. See Loos (2006 Loos, T. 2006. Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand, 3Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 3). 13. I thank Professor Horowitz for sharing this essay and permitting me to cite his unpublished work. 14. See Matsuda (2006 Matsuda , H. 2006 ' Colonial Modernity Across the Border: Yaeyama, the Ryukyu Islands, and Colonial Taiwan ', Dissertation, Australian National University . [Google Scholar]). 15. Indicators are the 1996–1999 Berkshire Conference for Women Historians which added international categories in this round. US History venues culminating in the 2009 focus at the American Historical Association annual conference on 'Globalizing Historiography' are evidence of mainstreaming effect. See http://www.bu.edu/historic/conference06.html (2006) and http://www.historians.org/Perspectives/issues/2007/0709/0709ann5.cfm (2009) (Accessed April 5, 2009) 16. http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1989/8910/8910AFF.cfm (accessed 5 March 2009). 17. The California school consists of scholars like Ken Pomeranz, R. Bin Wong and Jack Goldstone. The Osaka School is a government sponsored Center of Excellence composed of core members Shingo Minamizuka (President of the Asian Association of World History) Shigeru Akita, Shiro Momoki, Kazuaki Tsutsumi and other economic historians at Osaka University. The GEHN or Global Economic History Network project is a collaboration of these schools with scholars at LSE. For their mission statement and access to the working papers on global history consists of see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHNThemes.htm (accessed 5 March 2009). 18. Frank (1998 Frank, A. G. 1998. ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); Giovanni Arrighi, 'The World According to Andre Gunder Frank,' (Review, XXII: 3, 1999) Samir Amin, 'History as Eternal Cycle,' (Review, XXII: 3, 1999) and Immanuel Wallerstein, 'Frank Proves the European Miracle,' (Review, XXII: 3, 1999). 19. See Barlow (2011 Barlow, T. 2011. "What is a Poem?": The Event of Women and the Modern Girl as Problems in Global or World History". In Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture, Edited by: Palumbo-Liu, D., Robbins, B. and Tanoukhi, N. Durham: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]). 20. Another significant historiographic trend in the last decade is Harry Harootunian, Rebecca Karl and affiliated scholars argument that capitalism created the ground for 'comparative history' which tracks the cultural formation of modernity as an uneven spread, via imperialism, of consumer society. See for instance (Harootunian 2005 Harootunian , H. 2005 Some Thoughts on Comparability and the Space Time Problem , Boundary Two , vol. 32 , no. 2 , pp. 23 – 52 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 2). 21. See the Modern Girl around the World Collaborative Work Group (2008 Modern Girl around the World Collaborative Work Group , 2008 The Modern Girl Around the World , Durham , Duke University Press . [Google Scholar]). This first volume takes a global approach. 22. See Barlow (2011 Barlow, T. 2011. "What is a Poem?": The Event of Women and the Modern Girl as Problems in Global or World History". In Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture, Edited by: Palumbo-Liu, D., Robbins, B. and Tanoukhi, N. Durham: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]) for an auto-critique of the project. 23. Cross disciplines are academic spaces like Area Studies, Chinese Studies, Feminist Studies which make possible the crossing of disciplinary lines and consequently an expanded view of what disciplines add to research formula. Fuss has argued that scholars in feminist and deconstructive studies resist the pressure to become a discipline. 'What lies between them is not a third term nor even a disciplinary territory but a space of interminable investigation.' (p. 15) See Fuss (1994 Fuss, D. 1994. Feminism and Deconstruction: ms. en abyme, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). 24. Cited in Yeoh et al. (2003 Yeoh , B. , Lai , K. , Chaney , M. and Kiong , T. C. 2003 Approaching Transnationalisms: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multiculture Contacts, and Imaginings of Home , Boston/Dordrecht/London : Kluwer Academic Publishers , p. 2 . [Google Scholar], p. 2). 25. Yeoh et al. (2003 Yeoh , B. , Lai , K. , Chaney , M. and Kiong , T. C. 2003 Approaching Transnationalisms: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multiculture Contacts, and Imaginings of Home , Boston/Dordrecht/London : Kluwer Academic Publishers , p. 2 . [Google Scholar], p. 2), Basch et al. (1994 Basch , L. , Schiller , N.G. , Blanc , C. 1994 Introduction , in Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-States , Yeoh et al. , Basle , Gordon and Breach , pp. 3 – 4 . [Google Scholar], cited in Yeoh et al. 2003 Yeoh , B. , Lai , K. , Chaney , M. and Kiong , T. C. 2003 Approaching Transnationalisms: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multiculture Contacts, and Imaginings of Home , Boston/Dordrecht/London : Kluwer Academic Publishers , p. 2 . [Google Scholar] pp. 3–4). 26. I contributed an essay entitled 'Femininity.' 27. See Bracewell and Korner (2009 Bracewell , W. and Korner , A. 2009 ' UCL Center for Transnational History ,' a debate from the Palgrave DTNH http://www.transnationalhistory.com/discussion.aspx?id=1618 (accessed 5 April 2009) . [Google Scholar]). 28. Not all of the commentators concur with this editorial position. But for the most part this position goes unremarked; Kiran Klaus Patel's critique of the optical definition is acute and the exception proving the rule. He argues in, 'Transnational as Perspective,' 'reader beware; never place too much trust into such statements. Already the fact that the introduction speaks of' the Dictionary 'several times could be read as a translatio imperii from the Encyclopédie over the OED to this project. The short introduction smuggles in a definition of transnational history through the back door that is not shared by everybody in the field. Accordingly, transnational history is seen as a specific historical perspective. I wonder if the community of transnational historians will agree with that interpretation. So far, many in the field would rather define transnational history as a level of research, a method, or maybe even a paradigm.' http://www.transnationalhistory.com/discussion.aspx?id=1740 (accessed 17 November 2009) 29. See Ross (2009 Ross, K. 2009. "Historicizing Untimeliness". In Jacques Ranciere: History, Politics, Aesthetics, Edited by: Rockhill, G. and Watts, P. Durham: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]). 30. See Duara (2003 Duara, P. 2003. Sovereignty and Authenticity Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern, New York: Rowman and Littlefield. [Google Scholar]). Hegelian politics of recognition as a basis for historiographic invention empowers Duara to posit that because 'culture' had become 'an identificatory concept, an identified entity, and a potential object of identity' the creation of Manchukuo as a cultural state meant that identity took on the additional the force of compulsion, could motivate state formations and nation building. (p. 251). so, the argument goes, the offer of the multi-nationalities' cultural identities in the building of Manchuria should be understood as a 'contract wherein cultural subjecthood is granted in exchange for loyalty to the nation-state.' Subjecthood is another way of saying identity and consequently the argument, put simply, is what superseded and replaced colonialism (Duara contends this is what Manchukuo did) is the multi-cultural nation-state trolling for client states and contracting these to itself on the promise of identity or limited political recognition. This argument has found little reception. As Louise Young's review pointed out 'Although ideologues of Manchukuo undoubtedly sought to authenticate their state project by invoking connections to Asia civilization … Many of the specific strategies of sovereignty could only operate in the particular colonial conditions of Manchukuo [which was] less an East Asian condition of modernity than the imperatives of neocolonialism.' See Young (2007 Young , L. 2007 Book review of Duara , Journal of Asian Studies , vol. 63 , no. 2 , pp. 474 – 475 . [Google Scholar], pp. 474–475). 31. Schmidt (1997 Schmidt, A. 1997. Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch'aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in Korea. Journal of Asian Studies, 56(1): 26–46. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], pp. 26–46). 32. Also see Barlow (2007 Barlow , T. 2007 ' Asian women in reregionalization ', in What is Left of Asia? H. Yan and D. Vukovich , Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique , vol. 15 , no. 2 , pp. 285 – 318 . [Google Scholar]). 33. Mitchell (1988 Mitchell, T. 1988. Colonizing Egypt, 81–21. Berkeley: California Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 81–21). Interestingly while Mitchell bases his critique of representation on his reworking of commodity fetishism he never mentions the problem or commodities again in the book. His only comment is that by analogy department stores are a kind of commodity exhibition. For commodity exhibitions in Tianjin see Gerth (2003 Gerth, K. 2003. China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation, Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Mitchell's problem is not commodity fetishism but rather the fabrication of the order of truth in the metaphysics of presence and for that he substitutes the exhibition for the commodity displays of the department store. 34. – (The Modern Girl and Colonial Modernity in East Asia: Capital, Imperialism Gender), co-edited book with Ruri Ito and Hiroko Sakamoto (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2010). 35. http://127.0.0.1:4664/cache?event_id=54362&schema_id=1&q=lacan%2Ecom+captation&s=u14AykE6CCTSSTYjN9uKB45W2QU http://nosubject.com/Captation The French substantive captation is a neologism coined by French psychoanalysts from the verb capter. It was adopted by Jacques Lacan in 1948 and occurs regularly in his work from this point on. Lacan uses the term captation to describe the imaginary effects of the specular image on the subject. The double sense of the French term nicely indicates the ambiguous nature of the power of the specular image: On the one hand, it conveys the sense of 'captivation,' thus expressing the fascinating, seductive power of the image. On the other hand, the term also conveys the idea of 'capture,' which evokes the more sinister power of the image to imprison the subject in a disabling fixation. Lacan (1977 Lacan , J. 1977 Écrits: A Selection , trans . Alan Sheridan , London : Tavistock Publications , p. 18 . [Google Scholar], p. 18). 36. 'The notion of this "other scene" begins with Freud's attempts to understand dream life in relation to waking life and, according to Linda Belau' his notion of the unconscious as another locality (andere Lokalittas) in The Interpretation of Dreams. (Belau, 'Reading Otherwise: The Hermeneutics of Psychoanalysis' [Trauma, Repetition, and the Signifier], Janus Head, Fall 2002, 5:1, Spring 2002) The concept is best known in relation to Jacques Lacan, where it appears in 'The Meaning of the Phallus,' in Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose (1985 Mitchell , J. and Rose , J. 1985 Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne , trans . J. Rose , New York , Norton , p. 79 . [Google Scholar], p. 79): It is a question of rediscovering in the laws governing that other scene (eine andere Schauplatz) which Freud designated, in relation to dreams, as that of the unconscious, the effects discovered at the level of the materially unstable elements which constitute the chain of language: effects determined by the double play of combination and substitution in the signifier, along the two axes of metaphor and metonymy which generate the signified; effects which are determinant in the institution of the subject. 37. For corporate history of Siemens see http://www.siemens.com/about/en/history.htm and http://www.siemens.com/about/pool/headerflash/history/images/0301.jpg for 1899 Beijing Siemens electric street car installation. Siemen's global strategy began in the mid 19th and continued aggressively in the early 20th centuries as it electrified Russia (1852), Indonesia (1855) and India (1867), Egypt (1901), the latter three at the behest of colonial authorities. By contrast, GE appears more obviously as a national corporation and began to expand much later. See Bernard Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the rise of General Electric, 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 38. See Mitsubishi, founded in 1870 http://www.mitsubishi.com/e/history/index.html; Nippon Steel, 1857, http://www.nsc.co.jp/en/company/history/index.html; Kubota, 1890 http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Kubota-Corporation-Company-History.html; and so on. Analysis of Japanese Osaka Taylorist international companies appears in my 'Event, Excess, Abyss.'
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