Reading the China Dream
  • Blog
  • About
    • Mission statement
  • Maps
    • Liberals
    • New Left
    • New Confucians
    • Others
  • People
  • Projects
    • China and the Post-Pandemic World
    • Chinese Youth Concerns
    • Voices from China's Century
    • Rethinking China's Rise
    • Women's Voices
    • China Dream-Chasers
    • Textos en español
  • Themes
    • Texts related to Black Lives Matter
    • Texts related to the CCP
    • Texts related to Civil Religion
    • Texts related to Confucianism
    • Texts related to Constitutional Rule
    • Texts related to Coronavirus
    • Texts related to Democracy
    • Texts related to Donald Trump
    • Texts related to Gender
    • Texts related to Globalization
    • Texts related to Intellectuals
    • Texts related to Ideology
    • Texts related to the Internet
    • Texts related to Kang Youwei
    • Texts related to Liberalism
    • Texts related to Minority Ethnicities
    • Texts related to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
    • Texts related to Tianxia
    • Texts related to China-US Relations

Sun Ge, "The Signficance of Borders"

Sun Ge, “The Significance of Borders” [1]
 
 
Translated by Joshua A. Fogel
 
Translator’s introduction
 
Sun Ge 孙歌 (b. 1955) is the only female intellectual included on this site to date, a reflection less of our choices than of the Chinese intellectual world in general, which remains dominated by men, despite some changes in recent years.. Sun also stands in the minority as a dedicated postmodernist in the style of the postcolonial cultural theories of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, the English-language journal of the pan-Asian academic group based in Taiwan of which Sun is an active member. Dr. Sun Ge is a member of the Institute of Literature in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  She received her doctoral degree in political science in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Metropolitan University in Tokyo. 
 
Sun’s essay appeared in Tianya in 2017 and draws from her introduction to her book, Okinawa: Life on the Border.[2] She makes a case for the self-critical value of “borders” through a disjunctive presentation of her own experience in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the bitter history of Okinawa, and the artistic expression of avant-garde artists. While the language is difficult to follow at times, her point is clear in the end. This is ultimately a pacifist appeal of a leftist activist who finds the postmodern deconstruction of language a valuable antidote to the fatal arrogance of nationalism. She makes her argument about the value of a “border sensibility” as such an antidote through concrete, embodied experiences. This employs, rather than claims, a notable form of feminist analysis.
 
While Sun Ge does not directly engage the other voices in China’s intellectual public sphere—Liberal, Left or New Confucian arguments—she is a frequent speaker at major Chinese universities.[3] She also reflects some of the preoccupation of Left intellectuals, such as Qian Liqun 钱理群. Like Qian, Sun repeatedly invokes China’s great cultural critic, Lu Xun and takes pains to declare that she is just a normal person, suggesting a certain discomfort with her elite status as an intellectual. In a fashion similar to Qian’s focus on non-elites or grassroots (民間), Sun focuses on the dispossessed of Okinawa and Korea. She is clearly speaking in the tradition of subaltern studies. In the end, however, the reader is likely to join the reaction of the younger Chinese scholars with whom we have been working in feeling that “Dr. Sun’s essay is difficult to understand.”
 
 
Main Text
 
I have been going to Japan and Korea for my research just about every year.  After the Japanese earthquake of March 11, 2011 and consequent leakage from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, I was able while spending some time in Japan to get a sense at close range of the initial reactions to the disaster within Japanese society.
 
These disasters are an incomparably fearful event for mankind.  While they consume an enormous human cost, at the same time mankind has gained a harsh opportunity to reflect on the environment in which we live.  The real circumstances which have intentionally or unintentionally been hidden to us in peaceful times suddenly, when disaster falls, only then reveal their reality.  No one wishes for disaster, and those of us who study the history of thought are the same.  However, when disaster strikes, students of the history of thought have a responsibility to observe and analyze the real mechanisms with which “normal society” must rid itself of its covering when disaster suddenly strikes.
 
I unexpectedly encountered this lesson in 2011.  Drawing on the aftereffects of the Fukushima atomic power plant leak, I observed various aspects at work in Japanese social life and also the actual operating mechanisms of Japan’s state structures.  Of course, the most direct result draws on the specialized shelves of publications on the nuclear issue which grow like mushrooms after a spring rain in bookstores, large and small.  I found several convincing specialized works, gained a rudimentary understanding of the impact of nuclear power plants and nuclear accidents on daily human life.  I also came to understand one basic fact: the serious imbalance between investment in developing nuclear power and investment in handling nuclear waste means that nuclear power plants in times of ordinary operations are high-level apartment houses without toilets.  Therefore, handling nuclear waste always uses a method of “dilution” to stealthily recycle radioactive matter back into the living environment upon which we rely.  However, after the nuclear accident erupted, the electrical power company could not afford the enormous expense of the clean-up.  What’s more, because the follow-up investigation of nuclear contamination and the fact that such a study might harm the company’s interests, data on the most serious contamination in 2011, how much contamination of food and water the Japanese may receive, scarcely registers on the radiometer at all.
 
Given such a grave imbalance in the news, I concentrated my attention those days on the psychological aspect of human society.  How much do people long for a return to normal life, even if that means avoiding the big issue and focusing on the trivial, even to the point of self-delusion, supporting the impetus to survival.  Like the Japanese, I checked online for the contamination news issued daily by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and went out to buy certain foods one especially likes for safety sake.  I have come to truly understand during those days the genuinely helpless, as Lu Xun depicted it in his “I Want to Deceive People” (我要骗人)[4]—this aside, are there any other options?
 
Times change, five years have passed before one knows it.  Five years in light of radiated material with a half-life of several hundred to 1,000 years is effectively meaningless, although Japanese society had in fact already survived a crisis period and returned to tranquility.  I visited Tokyo in the summer of 2016. And when I was returning home, I lined up at the airport to go through the boarding process, and I very carefully inquired of the Chinese person behind me who had lived in Japan for several decades: What’s the current status of the contamination?  She angrily glared at me and said: What contamination is there in Tokyo?  Tokyo’s very safe!
 
I know that I violated a taboo.  Although, according to the results of monitoring in 2011, Tokyo contamination at the time was not at a negligible level, after five years it was diluted but had not dissipated; there are no longer media reports on the contamination situation, and possibly no longer scientists or circumstances to push the investigation further.  Thus, it would appear that this issue no longer exists.  Although we are still in the midst of the issue of how to extract the nuclear fuel from the ruined Fukushima nuclear power plant, from time to time because the administration has been quite good at issuing reports on radioactive sewage flowing into the sea, but the hot points of social concern have already shifted.  I oughtn’t rudely raise such an offensive problem to people leading a serene life.  This issue has points of similarity with a story described by Lu Xun: a household gives birth to a child, and when the baby reaches one month, it receives propitious words of congratulation for the future.  Although these propitious words are not certain to materialize, those offering them all receive thanks.  Only one person, however, speaks the truth: this child will die in the future—and he is thereupon driven away by everyone.
 
As for people who live in the foggy disaster area, I of course understand this compatriot’s feelings.  People can’t live for protracted periods of time under emergency conditions, which would require superhuman willpower.  In fact, I am no different from this fellow Chinese, for although I wrote the essay, “Normal Prejudice,”[5] I too in reality am often prejudiced in favor of normalcy.
 
Under tranquil circumstances, however, Japanese have by no means forgotten the dangers of nuclear power.  The mass demonstrations opposing the reconstitution of the nuclear power plant which Tokyo and many other areas continue to push forward have ultimately successfully hindered nuclear power plant operations at sites around Japan, meaning that such operations are at a standstill in Japan.  The opinion in favor of abolishing nuclear power plants remains consistent, and there has formed an opposition which stands face-to-face with those who want to promote the nuclear power industry.  One might say that this is an example of the will of a small number of postwar Japanese curtailing the power of capital.  As for follow-up effects from the ruins of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, at present we cannot locate reliable sources of information.  Occasionally we can learn from the media’s deemphasizing that sewage still from time to time spill over and is discharged into the sea.  Scientists say that the low concentration of draining sewage poses no hindrance to human life, and it is too extreme to say if they are lying: after humans accumulate a certain amount of radioactive material in their bodies, life then may face certain threats; according to scientific logic, if the level of contamination does not exceed the critical line, then we can say than people are safe.
 
The most susceptible people in East Asia to this critical line are Okinawans.  The much more severe threat they face compared to radiation contamination is all manner of bullying humiliation by the American military base on Okinawa society.  From the sexual assault and murder of Okinawan women to American soldiers’ getting away with criminal offenses; from the destruction of the local fishing and maritime cultivation industry by the military base economy to environmental pollution by the base itself; the circumstances facing Okinawans may be thought of as Japan’s and, indeed, all of East Asia’s bitterest problem.  Furthermore, the Japanese government’s submissive attitude toward the United States has enabled the Cabinet to take a basically laissez-faire attitude on the issue of Okinawa.  Okinawan society has consistently borne the consequences of Japan compromising with the U.S. and remaining isolated.  Taking the opportunity following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the Japanese marine corps and the American military moved forward with their build up and began to distract attention toward Okinawa.  Okinawan society’s long resistance to the American military base and its struggle against Japan’s pro-American policy are increasingly becoming normalized.  Opposition to moving the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station to Henoko, opposition to the incessant incidents of sexual violence committed by U.S. servicemen, and real life seem eternally unwilling to allow Okinawans peace and calm with demonstrations and protests turning into mass events.
 
As for Okinawans themselves, they certainly don’t want this sort of life.  In fact, they have virtually no choice but to live on a perpetual basis at this critical borderline: on the one hand, there is the unceasing daily diet of gathering together in the face of crises; on the other, there are the catastrophes when the crises erupt.  Life along the borderline means maintaining perpetual tension and confirming the unfamiliar in practice.  The significance of all this is that the people of Okinawa are forging their own distinctive sense of the world and their own ideals for life.
 
In the region of northeast Asia, Okinawa is located at what may be considered a peripheral area.  Of course, in no significant way can it be thought of as a center.  Strangely, though, I find it very difficult to sense on this island chain the unhappiness and injustice that one can easily feel in other so-called peripheral areas.  At the same time, the ever isolated and determined Okinawans have not abandoned their struggle because of the size of the Japanese and American forces arrayed against them, but instead have cultivated their own gardens with an attitude of warmth and clear-sightedness, overcoming the internal divisions which incessantly arise with a spirit of perseverance.  Moreover, they do it in a way that is extremely imaginative, making a valuable contribution to the intellectual resources of humanity. I once wrote an article that focused on the writings of Arasaki Moriteru 新崎盛晖, Kawamitsu Shin’ichi 川满信一, Okamoto Keitoku 冈本惠德, and other intellectuals; from their perspective, Okinawa is the international political symbol of northeast Asia, a microcosm of human society; it has compressed the densest portion of historical time and redefined spatial feelings of human society.
 
I recall several years ago when I paid a short visit to Okinawa, I used some free time to visit the defensive fortification built by the Japanese military during wartime in Okinawa, which is now a tourist attraction, and the war remains of the Himeyuri Memorial Tower.  While on the tour bus, the local tour guide chatted about the present situation in Okinawa.  I asked this fifty-year-old woman if Okinawans wanted independence.  She replied that they had missed their chance.  When the Americans first occupied Okinawa, there was a chance, but now it was behind us.  At present, there was no point to discussing issues which had no chance of coming to be.
 
This ordinary Okinawan woman, who was neither a scholar nor a social activist, inspired in me a deep feeling of respect.  In the complex resistance of the past half century, Okinawan society has had to confront the injustice of the Japanese state; it has had to face the U.S. military occupation which has violated and trampled on Okinawan human rights; it has had to face the power of Japanese capital which has greedily plundered Okinawan resources; and it has had to confront incessant fracturing and contradictions amid the material temptations offered to Okinawan society.  However, Okinawans have never resorted to violence in the face of humiliation and anger literally, never allowed their humiliation and anger to turn into violence.  In the Okinawans’ resistance there have practically been no instances of violence.  All protest meetings have proceeded peacefully, increasingly becoming a moment for the creation of consensus and common emotions among the protesters.  Perhaps, this middle-aged tour guide offers us a clue to understanding Okinawans` behavior—that is, forging a mass political consciousness out of the feelings of daily on the border.
 
Over the past few years, Okinawan social activists have increasingly taken the initiative in establishing contacts with areas outside Okinawa.  I frequently hear news that they have gone to Tokyo and elsewhere to participate in various academic activities and meetings.  In addition, I have heard that in the summer of 2015, a group of protesters opposing Abe’s efforts to reform the Constitution in front of the Diet building in Tokyo at the same time issued a call in support of expelling the U.S. military base from Okinawa.  Okinawans and knowledgeable people in Japan proper have thus created a close bond of solidarity.
 
Yi Chŏng-hwa李静和, a Korean poet living in Japan, ran a project over the years 2006-2008 which primarily featured Okinawan and mainland Japanese artists; it was called “Toward the Future of ‘Asia, Politics, Art.’”  In the three years of this project, avant-garde artists, performance artists, and musicians from Okinawa and Japan proper—altogether eight of them—contributed their works and recorded a DVD; twelve literary and art critics engaged in a discussion and explanation of these works.  As a product of their collective work on this fine-tuned project, in 2009 the Iwanami Publishing House brought out a volume entitled Zanshō no oto: “Ajia, seiji, aato” no mirai e (The sound of lingering pain: Toward a future of “Asia, politics, art”).  The book is divided into two parts: (1) written discussions by the critics; and (2) the DVD attached at the end of the book which includes the artists’ recorded performances and a video of their work.
 
This is a very particular book, its particularity residing in its powerful internal tension.  The performances, photography, painting, and music were all completely new in form, going well beyond the scope of “avant-garde art.”  It was a dialogue between life and death, life experience being sustained under extreme conditions, going beyond the form of artistic expression.  The history of suffering or the bitter history that Okinawa has experienced over more than a half century is brilliantly rendered in the mode of expression employed by these artists—grief without wound, resentment without anger.  And Okinawa, as the condensation of Asia’s history, has blossomed as a result.
 
Yi Chŏng-hwa wrote a wonderful preface to the book, and engaged in a highly readable exchange with the composer Takahashi Yūji高桥悠治. They called their dialogue “Don’t let death die,” and used “sound” as the medium to explore this heavy subject.  Yi Chŏng-hwa started with the following proposition to Takahashi Yūji:  “On seeing you today, I want to reflect with you on the meaning of sound.” Takahashi agreed, and he went on to explain:  “In other words, this is a question of ‘manufacturing.’ The act of manufacturing has to do with the realm of death, which seems not to exist but which in fact we feel exists everywhere.  What I say does not exist, but which must exist, is death.  This is the question of death.  Linked to this is the notion of ‘creation,’ a behavior associated with being, or life, or breathing…I constantly go back and forth between these two worlds.  But these days, I don’t know why, I can always hear the sound of death.”
 
The “sound” that Yi Chŏng-hwa’s is talking about is not the sound of language but is rather a kind of rhythm, a tempo, the length of a musical beat; it rejects the content of language, and directly bears the weight of a body’s aches and pains.  Yi Chŏng-hwa uses a “needle” which appears in the works of the artist who participated in shaping the project to express this acute suffering.  This is a kind of inchoate needle that wanders about the body; it and the female body form a unity.  Yi Chŏng-hwa states that the instant that this needle sharply stings the human body, the point of penetration cries out, with is the origin of the “sound.”
 
Born on Cheju Island in South Korea, Yi Chŏng-hwa experienced, like the Okinawans, great difficulty in finding a voice.  She rarely speaks of her own past, and all her remembrances of trauma she blends into her search for the linkages between art and politics.  This extraordinarily gifted poet has ingeniously upturned human everyday awareness, transforming “sound” into space.  As for herself, casting off the sound of the spoken word also casts off its meaning, which only took from in the instance of its disappearance, in the instant that it quietly departed human society.  At this point in time, the realm of “sound” differed from memory—it was dying far away, far from home.
 
Dying far from home is Yi Chŏng-hwa’s ultimate explanation of life on the border.”  She argues that Asians are infrequently able to die in their own space, and the majority pass away in a place they don’t know.  In the past people feared the consequences facing the corpse of one who had died away from home or just “of dying away from home”, and they used all sorts of religious rituals to prevent their souls from returning home.  Takahashi adds a note to this, saying that this means that an incident occurring at a given time and place cannot be locked into the culture and tradition of that place; it may actually evolve.  This note is extremely interesting, because it deepens Yi Chŏng-hwa’s theme of “dying far from home” and intensifies the significance, beyond itself, of the sufferings of Okinawans.  Drawing further on Yi Chŏng-hwa’s viewpoint, perhaps we might say that we early on have lost our own “space” and are moving along a path to “dying far from home.”  This is precisely the route of “living far from home”—could it be that we do not also live in an environment that cannot be cordoned off?  
 
Yi Chŏng-hwa clings to this depiction of “dying far from home” to reveal her understanding of life.  She argues that “dying far from home” is a rejection of the regularization of death; it does not allow death itself to die.  In its unceasing diffusion “dying far from home” thus transcends the individual body.  It is no longer the specific death of any old Tom, Dick, and Harry, as it has formed a vehicle for the fusion and convergence of all culture.  Precisely for this reason, life is a process awaiting “dedicating the body.”
 
"How should one maintain the form of not letting death die?  At the very moment of thinking about this question, it has nothing and everything to do with people.  We have to live.  We have to go on living.  At this point, if we say that we are talking in moral terms, then I feel we need an answer to the question of how to relate to no one and everyone.  Maybe this answer lies in creation, or maybe it is a ritual.  I feel that I need it.  Maybe we should call it Asia. The moment I think about how to sustain this in a way that does not let death die, I think of something that involves people to the smallest extent.  The smallest extent and also the greatest extent.  Those who must live, or have to go on living. If we are to speak of this in terms of some kind of ethics—then we must acknowledge our need at this very moment in history to find a way that allows us, with the least effort and greatest potential, to make connections.  We create art that is a response, and in that sense we might call it a ritual.  That’s what I’m feeling.  And perhaps, that is what I would call 'Asia.'"  
 
Yi Chŏng-hwa’s discussion of “dying far from home” is admittedly difficult to understand, but if we coordinate it with the contents of the entire book, especially the images in the DVD attached at the end of the book to help understand, her explanation is most certainly not deliberately mystifying.  The book records that from the bitter sacrifices of the Battle of Okinawa to the ravages Okinawan society still has no option but to endure.  Her theme then is “forgotten death.”  However, in the eyes of artists and commentators, death is not merely an unavoidable disaster; it is simultaneously a kind of religious rite in the world of humankind.  This is precisely where Yi Chŏng-hwa is distinguished from Western romantic poets—she suggests that it is an issue that belongs not to God but to humanity.  From a different perspective, Zanshō no oto looks at the living world that we bring in, and with Okinawa as its base point, links it to Cheju Island, links it to Kwangju, links it to humanity’s violence and disaster.  Yi Chŏng-hwa rejects the stance of sound turning into memory and she rejects viewing memory simply as the recollection of past incidents, because all images expressed in a book live in the present moment, and the human body is the vehicle for these images.  Yi Chŏng-hwa rejects the idea of freeing oneself from sufferings and sins which go by the name of memory, and she calls on people in a way that will not allow death itself to die, but will make the issue of “dying far from home” continue on.
 
This is indeed the picture of life at the borderline.  People can escape from the memory, and when they face their memories with a scrutinizing attitude, the border solidifies as a category, an assigned subject.  Corresponding to this, history has become an object of retrieval unrelated to oneself.  In Okinawan society today, although no longer like Okinawa in wartime when there was such large-scale mass slaughter, when there was collective suicide forced on people by the Japanese military with the stench of blood felt to the bone, the situation has now quietly changed.  At that time the violence caused by American military mercilessly bombing Shuri Castle with extraordinary brutality was hidden from everyday life.  The condition of life at the border, speaking with respect to Okinawan thinkers and artists, in particular to the people of Okinawa, means endlessly uncovering self-delusion and false façades; it means endlessly creating new ideas and forms of expression, endlessly breaking through perceptual inertia, and preserving a sharp power of observation of the situation at hand.
 
The Okinawan poet Kawamitsu Shin’ichi 川满信一 calls to people’s attention not only the need to focus on conspicuous oppression and control, but also the need to remain vigilant “spontaneously following along in the name of liberty.”  In Okinawan society’s protests against the Japanese cabinet’s repeated offers to sell Okinawa and protests against the many crimes committed by the American military in Okinawa, Kawamitsu at the same time is investigating the “structure of the emperor system” within Okinawa society.  As he sees it, the greatest threat to freedom is not political pressure from without, but coming from within a person.  His masterpiece, Ryūkyū kyōwa shakai kenpō no senseiryoku: guntō, Ajia, ekkyō no shisō (The latent power of a constitution in the republican society of the Ryūkyū Islands: ideas about archipelago, Asia, and borders) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 2014), discusses how on the basis of the freedom of the human mind we can establish genuinely free society.  This famous Okinawan poet does not engage in an abstract discussion of some general significance of freedom and equality, and when Okinawan society demands independence and autonomy, he does not stand on the opposite side of such appeals—he only stubbornly calls attention to people to the following: when the weak use the means of the strong to fight for their own power, they are in reality coconspirators with the powerful.  Because of this, the unrealistic appeal of Okinawan independence significantly is an ideal which is difficult to see as a true subjectivity established by Okinawan society.  In Kawamitsu’s “Constitution,” he opens with discussing how humanity’s arrogance may bring about the ruin of civilization, how it constructs the foundation for war, and Okinawa which is always regarded as a victim receives a stark investigation by Kawamitsu on this question of arrogance: “Those who boasted of Urasoe [castle in Okinawa] were ruined by Urasoe, and those who boasted of Shuri [castle in Okinawa] were ruined by Shuri.  Those who bragged about the pyramids were ruined by the pyramids, and those who bragged about Great Wall were ruined by the Great Wall.  Those who boasted of military armaments were destroyed by them, and those who boasted of laws were destroyed by them.  Those who revered deities were destroyed by them, those who relied on human beings were destroyed by them, and those who banked on love were destroyed by love.”
 
Of course, for either the strong or the weak to opt for “freedom” is very difficult.  Freedom does not mean one can extract oneself from the existing power structure, though it does mean not to rely on any fixed value.  Now, when Yi Chŏng-hwa stresses the perpetuity of the issue of “dying far from home” and Kawamitsu Shin’ichi interrogates the relationship between arrogance and war, they both penetrate value judgments of the surface of things and invert the ossified normal state of things.  This is their understanding of freedom, as it is rooted in the intellectual persistence of conditions at the border.  Contemporary societal formation of “spontaneously following,” upon which Kawamitsu’s “Constitution” focuses, suggests an ideal social structure.  It organically structures a form of human existence and does not look closely at the existential form of the state.
 
Perhaps, in Asia and even the world, however subjectivities are formed wherever they exist, however free will is formed, and however historical issues are understood, they resemble the case of Okinawan thinkers; they examine closely the concrete concept of values in a border state and thereby always work hard to eliminate lazy thinking, something rarely observed.  In the cooperation between Yi Chŏng-hwa and the Okinawan artists, we come to appreciate their vigilance against the treasonous nature of language and concepts: when Yi Chŏng-hwa stresses the significance of not relying on language and relies on the meter of “sound,” when she emphasizes connecting with people at the lowest level, she hopes to convey how to avoid the ossification of received definitions of language and the interference of currently fashionable humanism.  Again we have here her repeated emphasis on the significance of the fact that “sound” is unlike the human voice.  Kawamitsu Shin’ichi in the same way distrusts language; concerning the basic concept of his “Constitution,” he elaborates: “Commandments about benevolence are revealed spiritually, and one’s breaking of commandments must be judged by oneself.  Courts of law are established in each person’s heart.”  To break through concretized imagination, Kawamitsu transcends the border consciousness of reality as concerns the inclusiveness of the rules of Ryukyu republican society: “Those who agree with the fundamental principles of this constitution and are of a mind to preserve it will have met requirements in their place irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender, or citizenship.”
 
Because of this, Okinawa is an open arena that characterizes borders.  In this arena anyone can subjectively contemplate the most basic issue of humankind.  Amid the interactions among Kawamitsu Shin’ichi, Yi Chŏng-hwa, and their friends, I have continually learned how to preserve this border sensibility, and to use it in studying intellectual history.
 
Today, I am running into more and more Chinese who are sympathetic to Okinawans, and intellectuals living in different areas of northeast Asia are attempting to see Okinawa as an intermediary in assessing the history of East Asia.  The border sensibility of Okinawan thinkers is truly useful for society in northeast Asian which is in an extremely weak position, continually producing the most innovative ideas.  Perhaps life on the border is not only an unavoidable act, but is also a refusal to engage in self deception, and the courage to face human life squarely.
 
Notes
 
[1]  孙歌,“临界的意义“《天涯》[Frontiers] (January 2017), pp. 25-30.
 
[2] 孙歌,《冲绳:在临界状态中生活》导言,广西师大出版社,2017.
 
[3] For example, Sun spoke at East China Normal University, Shanghai in March 2018: http://www.ecnu.edu.cn/50/ea/c1950a151786/page.htm.
 
[4] Trans.: Lu Xun wrote this initially in Japanese and published it in Kaizō [改造] (April 1936); it appeared in his own Chinese translation in June of that year in the Shanghai journal 《文學叢報》.
 
[5] 孙歌,. “常态偏执”与当今世界[J]. 天涯,2013,(1).
 
[6] See, for example: 孙歌,. 冲绳:在临界状态中生活[J]. 文化纵横, 2011:4 and孙歌,. 内在于冲绳的东亚战后史[J]. 读书, 2010 :2.
 
 

    Subscribe for fortnightly updates

Submit
This materials on this website are open-access and are published under a Creative Commons 3.0 Unported licence.  We encourage the widespread circulation of these materials.  All content may be used and copied, provided that you credit the Reading and Writing the China Dream Project and provide a link to readingthechinadream.com.

Copyright

  • Blog
  • About
    • Mission statement
  • Maps
    • Liberals
    • New Left
    • New Confucians
    • Others
  • People
  • Projects
    • China and the Post-Pandemic World
    • Chinese Youth Concerns
    • Voices from China's Century
    • Rethinking China's Rise
    • Women's Voices
    • China Dream-Chasers
    • Textos en español
  • Themes
    • Texts related to Black Lives Matter
    • Texts related to the CCP
    • Texts related to Civil Religion
    • Texts related to Confucianism
    • Texts related to Constitutional Rule
    • Texts related to Coronavirus
    • Texts related to Democracy
    • Texts related to Donald Trump
    • Texts related to Gender
    • Texts related to Globalization
    • Texts related to Intellectuals
    • Texts related to Ideology
    • Texts related to the Internet
    • Texts related to Kang Youwei
    • Texts related to Liberalism
    • Texts related to Minority Ethnicities
    • Texts related to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
    • Texts related to Tianxia
    • Texts related to China-US Relations