Can the Chinese Nation Be One? Gu Jiegang, Chinese Muslims, and the Reworking of Culturalism

Abstract

This article examines how the classicist and folklorist Gu Jiegang, in conversation with his Hui (Chinese Muslim) colleagues at the Yugong study society and journal (published 1934–1937), theorized the “Chinese nation” ( Zhonghua minzu) as an internally plural and open-ended political project, to resist homogenizing claims by both Japanese imperialists and the ruling Chinese Nationalist party under Chiang Kai-shek in the 1930s. Echoing the struggles of his Hui colleagues to articulate their place in the nation as both Muslim and Chinese, Gu reworked traditional “culturalist” assumptions about the non-racial character of identity formation to pose minority experience as constitutive of a constantly expanding and transforming political community. When Gu asserted in his notorious 1939 essay that the “ Zhonghua minzu Is One,” he posed a unity built not on cultural assimilation or ethnic identity, but on a shared political commitment to an expansive and culturally hybrid concept of the “Chinese nation.”

Hong Kong's Networked Agitprop: Popular Nationalism in the Wake of the 2019 Anti-Extradition Protests

“…Hong Kong has a protracted relation with nationalism that reflects the complicated history of the modern Chinese-speaking world as it unfolded from the nineteenth century onwards. As the Qing empire struggled with domestic challenges and foreign aggression (Zarrow, 2005), Chinese intellectuals took on the challenge of creating the "New China" that was to emerge from the tumultuous collapse of the empire (Duara, 1993;Jenco, 2019;Lam, 2011;Mitter, 2004). As a result, basic matters of category, such as the reach of the new Chinese nation-state, the extent and classification of its people, and the national language and culture were all matters of fierce discussion, as is commonly the case in newly formed nations.…”

Republikánská antropologie jako komunita praxe: Mezi politickou ideologií Kuomintangu a formováním národa pomocí etnografického výzkumu v jihozápadní Číně

“…Ve své práci kladl důraz na pokrevní příbuznost čínských etnik, byl však proti rasově-kulturnímu asimilačnímu projektu KMT postavenému na exkluzivitě většinových Hanů. V tomto svém článku volal po deetnizaci celého národního projektu a jeho následném nahrazení politickým závazkem vůči vnitřně různorodému, ale navenek jednotnému a jedinému čínskému národu (Jenco 2019). Požadoval tak politizaci jednotné čínské národní identity se zachováním jakési strategické nejednoznačnosti -nezdůrazněnou různorodostí a prohlašovanou jednotou.…”

The Aura of the Local in Chinese Anthropology: Grammars, Media and Institutions of Attention Management

“…Fellow travellers of the early Anthropologists were thinkers such as Gu Jiegang, who also emphasised the cultural unity of the ‘Chinese nation’, including Hui Muslims (Jenco, 2019) and socialist intellectuals, whose writing was directly aimed at changing society (Spakowski, 2019). Among these different groups of intellectuals, the emphasis of Chinese and local particularity played an important role: for instance, in the writing of socialists such as Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong, the concepts of ‘the common people’ and later the ‘revolutionary classes’ were crucial in adapting and indigenizing socialism (Yuan, 2019).…”