In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Karen Thornber about her article “Decentering the ‘West’ and ‘China’ in China–West Comparison,” from Telos 199 (Summer 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the inherent pitfalls of the project of literary comparison, and how these pitfalls can be avoided; what it means to “decenter” the “West” and “China,” and how the process of decentering relates to the process of centering; whether the process of decentering involves the recognition of alternative imperial (or nation-based) centers and in a sense a re-establishing of the paradigm of centering; how the focus on decentering relates to the center-periphery paradigm in the production and dissemination of national literatures; how the transnational approach affects our consideration of problems such as discrimination, healthcare, ecological degradation, and climate change; and how the political nature of the opposition of China and the West affects the study of literature. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 199 are available for purchase in our online store.
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In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Ban Wang about his article “The Clash of Civilization and World Community: The West and China,” from Telos 199 (Summer 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss whether it still makes sense to speak of distinct human cultures; if the very ideas of China and the West need to be discarded, or, if not, what the basis of such distinctions would be and why they persist; whether there is a human commonality that lies below and beyond age-old cultural norms, and if so what is its content and what forms does it take; how both Chinese and Western forms of universalism have converged to form a cosmopolitan unity; how multiculturalism and identity politics have undermined cross-cultural interaction and a universalist vision; and what alternatives there are for affirming both universalism and local culture. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 199 are available for purchase in our online store. In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Mark G.E. Kelly and Timothy W. Luke about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for world order. Our current issue, Telos 199 (Summer 2022), features essays by Luke, Kelly, and Pan on the war in Ukraine, excerpts of which appear here. Click through to read the full articles at the Telos Online website (subscription required). To learn how your university can subscribe to Telos, visit our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 199 are also available for purchase in our online store. Telos 199 (Summer 2022): China and the West is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.
It would be a mistake, though, to see China and the West as polar opposites or competing civilizations, separated by their opposing political interests on the one hand and by the history of each of their cultural traditions on the other hand. Even if they had separate long histories, the recent past has seen many more opportunities for interaction and orientation around common projects and problems. Moreover, since the past is always a projection from out of the present, the idea of a clash of civilizations is not a legacy but a project. An alternative endeavor would be to conceive of the relationship between China and the West as existing within a larger totality. The definition of such a totality must occur within a particular perspective, however, and therein lies the problem. China and the West are clearly competing to define the framework of global order. Consequently, any attempt to consider the relationship between the two must look to the vision of universality that each side is trying to establish against the other. This issue of Telos considers a variety of ways of defining the overarching perspective from which the comparison between China and the West makes sense. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” wrote Larry Fink in his March 24 letter to BlackRock shareholders. “We had already seen connectivity between nations, companies, and even people strained by two years of the pandemic.” Fink, who oversees $10 trillion of wealth as the world’s largest asset manager, is right to be concerned that an era has ended. “Globalization—as promoted by the United States over the past 70 years—has led to the greatest reduction in poverty and the biggest decline in interstate conflict in human history,” writes Matthew Rooney of the George W. Bush Institute. So will the world, in Fink’s new era, be less prosperous and peaceful? Many think high levels of trade—in other words, continued interdependence—will save the day, yet this view is debatable. “Does trade increase or decrease the likelihood of conflict?” Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard political scientist, asked in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, his landmark 1996 book. “The assumption that it reduces the probability of war between nations is, at a minimum, not proven, and much evidence exists to the contrary.” Huntington, building on the work of others, pointed out that it is expectation that drives events. “Economic interdependence fosters peace,” he wrote, “only ‘when states expect that high trade levels will continue into the foreseeable future.'” So what is happening in the post-invasion period? The World Trade Organization in April predicted that merchandise trade would grow 3.0% this year—down from a previous forecast of 4.7%—but admitted growth could be as low as 0.5%. Last year’s trade volume—the WTO put total merchandise trade at a staggering $22.4 trillion after growth of 9.8%—set a record, but that figure could decline this year. Last year’s volume was the result of a sugar high, boosted by one-time government stimulus measures. Resulting commodity price increases further inflated trade statistics. The factors driving trade in 2021, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development correctly stated in February, will “abate.” Projections of increasing trade depend on forecasts of continuing prosperity. There is concern, however, that a downturn is coming and it will be especially severe. “You’d better brace yourself,” Jamie Dimon, the influential CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told a financial conference in New York in early June. He said everyone should expect not “storm clouds”—his previous prediction—but a “hurricane,” which could be “a minor one or Superstorm Sandy.” The Telos Student Seminars provide a forum for students around the world to engage with critical theory by discussing a common set of paired texts from Telos—one current essay and one pertinent essay from our archives. In our second cycle of seminars, we are discussing Huimin Jin’s “Cultural Self-Confidence and Constellated Community: An Extended Discussion of Some Speeches by Xi Jinping” (Telos 195, Summer 2021) and an excerpt from Cornelius Castoriadis’s “The Crisis of Western Societies” (Telos 53, Fall 1982). The following reports are from the Telos Student Seminars groups in Budapest, Hungary, and Nanjing, China. For more details about the Telos Student Seminars, including summaries of the two essays under discussion, click here. |
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