Speaking of China / Speaking of Europe

Title

Speaking of China / Speaking of Europe

Author

Matt K. Matsuda

Page

69-88

DOI

Abstract

A focus on European, particularly French, commentaries about China examines the ways that Europeanness and Chineseness have been structured by attempts to define cultural identities inexorably linked to commonly shared projects: adherences to historical estate defined by universality and civilization. Interrogating Chineseness and Europeaness does not propose incommensurability between East and West, for such a difference is framed within an understanding of China and— politically and philosophically—Confucianism, as a Europeanism. This is a universal humanism that operates because it proposes not an opposition between individualism and communitarianism, but because it ties the classical to the modern (court government and export capitalism), and defines the shaping of great civilizations, here Europe (or France) and China, through common heritage.

Keyword

Chineseness, Europeaness, Confucianism, civilization, postcolonial, diaspora, universality

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