“Deconstruction, justice of the 'other', and enlightenment spirit : notes from reading Derrida” (Publication, 2010)
Year
2010
Text
Lu, Xinyu. Deconstruction, justice of the 'other', and enlightenment spirit : notes from reading Derrida. In : Telos ; no 151 (2010). (Derr16)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Derrida, Jacques
(El-Biar, Algerien 1930-2004 Paris) : Philosoph, Professor für Philosophie, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris ; Professor of the Humanities, University of California, Irvine.
Subjects
Philosophy : Europe : France
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References / Sources
Chronology Entries (1)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2010 |
Lu, Xinyu. Deconstruction, justice of the 'other', and enlightenment spirit : notes from reading Derrida [ID D24729]. The internal theoretical threads linking postmodern theory and today's Chinese intellectual world merit further research and reflection. Today, due to the popularity of classical Western political philosophy promoted and fostered by intellectual leaders of the 1980s, the issue of how, from the perspective of political philosophy, to understand deconstruction's challenge to classical Western philosophy has become an important topic of discussion. From the New Enlightenment to today, we must bid farewell to 1980s China, yet a mere parting goodbye is not enough. Rather, we must revisit the 1980s in order to say goodbye. The fundamental question here is how should we, in contemporary China, recognize and re-understand the significance of enlightenment ? Particularly, how should we recognize and re-understand this significance in the current climate of escalating cultural conservatism ? Today, perhaps the time for re-understanding deconstruction has already arrived. After all, to the Chinese and Asian intellectual world, which seeks to reflect on, conduct dialogue with, and resist Western-centrism, what is the significance of Derrida's deconstruction of Western-centrism ? What kind of significance does it hold for us in an imagined 'rising great nation' as we consider how to re-understand the nation-state, how to reestablish Asian and 'third-world' intellectual fields and cultural heritages, how to once again confront and consider the phenomenon of contemporary imperialism, and how to confront humanity's shared problems of ethics and responsibility ? These are the questions we keep in mind when reading Derrida today. The 'post' of the postmodern in Derridas thought manifests itself in his thorough reflection on the Western-centrism of Western Enlightenment thought and his response to the social crises brought about by globalization. This is a powerful extension of the spirit of reflection in Western Enlightenment thought. This led him to trace from Heidegger to Husserl's phenomenology, to Nietzsche and ancient Greece—this path is actually the same as that traced by the Chinese intellectual and academic world in the 1980s, and this is why Derrida is especially significant to our review of the 1980s. This significance manifests particularly in that our reason for tracing this thought was precisely opposite to Derrida’s reason: the entire 1980s New Enlightenment movement wanted to return to the main narrative of Western-centrism, which was considered the main current of world civilization. This is why, when Derrida's thought was introduced to China in the 1990s, it was disassociated from his reflection on Enlightenment and lost the critical response of this reflection toward the Chinese problem. Thus, deconstruction to a great extent was relegated to frothy discourse within the academic knowledge-production system. To us, this was a huge loss of a thought resource. Moreover, it should not become a reason to slander deconstruction, as deconstruction was, from the beginning, absent from the Chinese intellectual world. In their general introduction to the Sources of Western Learning (Xixue Yuanliu) series, 'Re-reading the West', Gan Yang and Liu Xiaofeng write: "Chinese people with healthy reading of the West laugh harmlessly at the bravado of the so-called 'anti-Western-centrism' heard within Western institutions. Because the healthy reader knows that although the original motive behind it is pure, it nevertheless often leads to even narrower Western-centrism—there is nothing new under the sun." This conclusion is quite forceful, and later scholars such as myself cannot help but have some doubts. In the last hundred years, Western learning has gradually seeped into China, and whether what we read is 'healthy' is not at all clear, yet it is intertwined with various Western centrisms and anti-centrisms, and these together shape our thought. In the last few years, classical Western political philosophy and Chinese cultural conservatism have entered the stage hand-in-hand, responding to China's rise to a powerful country. This is a new historical situation that also appeals to new heated cultural arguments. This is almost an echo of the 1980s cultural craze, but the problem consciousness is related, yet different. How do we, from the perspective of reflection, deal with the domestic and foreign problems of China's new democracy today ? What does Western 'anti-Western-centrism' mean to us ? With projections of nationalism and statism lurking in the background, what kind of self-identification and national consciousness should we establish as a 'great country' ? This is a concern shared by all. Under the historical conditions of today, are the national liberation and nationalist consciousness that we once justified for the third world still useful in China, Asia, and the world ? These are the real, persistent problems that we face today. |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
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