Item Details
Skip Navigation Links
   ActiveUsers:1666Hits:20894244Skip Navigation Links
Show My Basket
Contact Us
IDSA Web Site
Ask Us
Today's News
HelpExpand Help
Advanced search

In Basket
  Journal Article   Journal Article
 

ID101337
Title ProperWest that is not in the west
Other Title Informationidentifying the self in Oriental modernity
LanguageENG
AuthorShih, Chih-yu
Publication2010.
Summary / Abstract (Note)This paper discusses the meaning of 'the West' in Chinese and Japanese political discourse. It argues that for Japanese and Chinese political thinkers, the West does not exist in the West. Rather, the West is sometimes at the periphery and, at other times, at the centre. For them, 'the Chinese' is about the epistemology of all-under-heaven. There is no such concept as 'Other' in this epistemology. As a result, modern Western thinkers depend on opposing the concrete, historical, yet backward Other to pretend to be universal, while Chinese and Japanese thinkers concentrate on self-rectification to compete for the best representative of 'the Chinese' in world politics. 'The Chinese' is no more than an epistemological frame that divides the world into the centre and the periphery. In modern times, the Japanese have accepted Japan as being at the periphery of world politics, while the West is at the centre. To practise self-rectification is to simulate the West. The West is therefore not the geographical West, but at the centre of Japanese selfhood. Self-knowledge produced through Othering and that through self-rectification are so different that the universal West could not make sense of the all-under-heaven way of conceptualizing the West.
`In' analytical NoteCambridge Review of International Affairs Vol. 23, No. 4; Dec 2010: p537-560
Journal SourceCambridge Review of International Affairs Vol. 23, No. 4; Dec 2010: p537-560
Key WordsModernity ;  China ;  Japan ;  Politics ;  Tribal