MCLC: Xi's authoritarianism (2)

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Xi’s authoritarianism (2)
It is eerie to read this Bell, an authoritarianist sycophant. I think this sort of sycophancy is a historical type which re-emerges periodically, and so emerges increasingly now, with the current turn to Strongmen, who will sponsor and pay people to do this. Or, people volunteer themselves as sycophants. In both cases, it seems that the more powerful the Chinese state, and its bullying at home and abroad, the more we will see this kind of type stand up for and justify Chinese authoritarianism. In the hands of Westerners it carries a certain racist flavor (in the hint that somehow Chinese are childlike and unfit, and must be kept in chains or they will get out of hand).
But I think far more important is the embrace of the ideology of "unity", which here underpins the argument.
This ideology belongs with the worship of Strongmen, and it is orchestrated by themselves and their propaganda ministers. Scholars embracing it have been seduced by it: A classic case of mistaking a powerful ideological framing for a somehow natural reality.
The best analysis anywhere of the Chinese case of "unity" as ideological dogma is probably the splendid little book by Kenneth Dean and Brian Massumi, First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (New York: Autonomedia. 1992).
Partly inspired by that, I took a stab at the same topic, in my article "Terra-cotta Conquest: The First Emperor's Clay Army's Blockbuster Tour of the World" in Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1.1 (2015), 162-183, where I argued that Westerners' infatuation with the terracotta clay army on exhibition tour is a symptom of the widespread loss of faith in free politics, and a new yearning for Strongmen.
On China, I argued that the Warring States was an example of a long-lasting international system of coexisting polities (which Victoria Tin-bor Hui wrote very interestingly about in her book War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe). We should not forget that the period of the "Warring States" was so named by the ideologically motivated imperial posterity, -- something scholars often forget to reflect on -- or they choose not to.
And I argued that we should pay attention to how, after the overthrow of the Qin, Xiang Yu chose not to declare himself a Qin-style emperor, of a "unified" China, which he might have done in that moment. And he also did not continue Qin-style conquests in the name of "Unity." He seems, rather, to have hoped to restore the oikumene of states that had once been. This is one of the most intriguing, and probably most consequential as well as most obscured, questions of Chinese history.
But instead, sadly, Mr. Liu Bang cast himself as the Chosen One by inventing various make-believe omens, and then re-established Qin-style Empire, in yet another river of blood. Whatever all the history books say, that too was a choice, not something inevitable. China's tragedy, and curse, and a tragedy for the world.
--yrs,
Magnus Fiskesjö <magnus.fiskesjo at cornell.edu>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 10, 2016
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