ICCS WPS 39 In Praise of Democracy? The Cultural-Political Crisis underlying the Trump Impeachment
Author/Speaker｜Allen Chun
Publication Date｜2021-02
Abstract
Abstract
Orientalism is still alive and well, in the West, of course. The brilliance of Said’s (1978) demonstration that this was a discursive mindset rooted in the maintenance of colonial rule and its enlightened civilizing mission did not mean to suggest that cultural dualism per se was evidence of a colonializing regime. “Colonializing” regimes can take on myriad forms. Nationalism and global capitalism can be shown to appropriate analogous ideologies of order that serve the same function. The discourse of democracy has been proselytized throughout the world with equal fervor as Christian missions, typically to combat authoritarian enemies.
Author's Bio
Allen Chun is Chair Professor in the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His research interests include socio-cultural theory, (trans)national identity, and (post)colonial formations. Most of his work has dealt with Chinese-speaking societies, contemporary and late traditional. He is the author of Unstructuring Chinese Society: The Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of "Land" in the New Territories of Hong Kong (2000), Forget Chineseness: On the Geopolitics of Cultural identification (2017) and On the Geoprgamatics of Anthropological Identification (2019). He edited a special double issue of Cultural Studies 14(3-4), "(Post)Colonialism and Its Discontents"; a special issue of Social Analysis 46(2), "Global Dissonances"; a special issue in Router 23(Autumn), "The New Face and Cultural Crisis of (Post)colonialism in Hong Kong," and co-edited a book, Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries (2004). His major papers have appeared in diverse journals: Toung Pao, Late Imperial China, History and Anthropology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, Current Anthropology, Theory Culture & Society, boundary 2, Cultural Anthropology, Communal/Plural, Postcolonial Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Critique of Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, and positions.
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