Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China - Couverture rigide

Duara, Prasenjit

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0226167216 ISBN 13 : 9780226167213

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 1995

Synopsis

This work offers a systematic account of the relationship between the nation-state, nationalism and the concept of linear history. Focusing primarily on China and including discussion of India, Duara argues that many historians of postcolonial nation-states have adopted linear, evolutionary history of the Enlightenment/colonial model. As a result, they have written repressive, exclusionary and incomplete accounts. The backlash against such histories has resulted in a tendency to view the past as largely constructed, imagined or invented. In this book, Duara offers a way out of the impasse between constructionism and the evolving nation; he redefines history as a series of multiple, often conflicting narratives produced simultaneously at national, local and transnational levels. In a series of closely linked case studies, he considers such examples as the very different histories produced by Chinese nationalist reformers and partisans of popular religions, the conflicting narratives of statist nationalists and of advocates of federalism in early 20th-century China. He demonstrates the necessity of incorporating contestation, appropriation, repression and the return of the repressed subject into any account of the past that will be meaningful to the present. Duara demonstrates how to write histories that resist being pressed into the service of the national subject in its progress - or stalled progress - toward modernity.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Prasenjit Duara offers the first systematic account of the relationship between the nation-state, nationalism, and the concept of linear history. Focusing primarily on China and including discussion of India, Duara argues that many historians of postcolonial nation-states have adopted a linear, evolutionary history of the Enlightenment/colonial model. As a result, they have written repressive, exclusionary, and incomplete accounts.

The backlash against such histories has resulted in a tendency to view the past as largely constructed, imagined, or invented. In this book, Duara offers a way out of the impasse between constructionism and the evolving nation; he redefines history as a series of multiple, often conflicting narratives produced simultaneously at national, local, and transnational levels. In a series of closely linked case studies, he considers such examples as the very different histories produced by Chinese nationalist reformers and partisans of popular religions, the conflicting narratives of statist nationalists and of advocates of federalism in early twentieth-century China. He demonstrates the necessity of incorporating contestation, appropriation, repression, and the return of the repressed subject into any account of the past that will be meaningful to the present. Duara demonstrates how to write histories that resist being pressed into the service of the national subject in its progress—or stalled progress—toward modernity.

Biographie de l'auteur

Prasenjit Duara is chair of the department of history at the University of chicago. He is the author of Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 and Sovereignty and Authentcity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 1995
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226167216
• ISBN 13: 9780226167213
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 286
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible