Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere

Rankin, Mary Backus

doi:10.1177/009770049301900204

Cited by 75 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Other scholars who contributed to the article series all expressed similar concerns and advanced their own respective theoretical solutions (Rankin, 1993;Madson, 1993;Chamberlain, 1993). Concluding the serial, Philip C. C. Huang proposed a new notion of the "third realm" to resolve the problem:…”

Section: A Possible Chinese Public Spherementioning

confidence: 99%

Male Subjectivities: The Idealization of the Democratic Public Sphere: Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988)

Shen

2011

Asian Cinema

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This paper explores male subjectivities that encompass primordial democratic consciousness in both 1930s and 1980s China. Drawing on Jurgen Habermas’s conceptualization of the public sphere, this paper identifies an imagined modern public sphere against Chinese urban representations. In both Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988), male protagonists adopt the role of torchbearer in the vibrant urban sphere, working toward a newly defined social justice. Asserting a new male subjectivity evolved with the imaginative public good, providing a training ground for Chinese democracy. All of the above mirror some prominent features of the public sphere, including the masculine aspect of Habermas’s idealisation of the concept, as pinpointed by Nancy Fraser (1992).

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Section: A Possible Chinese Public Spherementioning

confidence: 99%

Male Subjectivities: The Idealization of the Democratic Public Sphere: Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988)

Shen

2011

Asian Cinema

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“…Even on a theoretical level, the transfer of a normative public sphere concept built on Western democratic thinking to, for instance, Chinese contemporary society is clearly problematic (e.g. Rankin, 1993). But herein lies a challenge for research.…”

Section: The Value Of the Pamphleteering Analogymentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyone a pamphleteer? Reconsidering comparisons of mediated public participation in the print age and the digital era

Moe

2010

Media, Culture & Society

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“…In this article, I have generally translated gong as 'public', although it must be noted that in late Imperial China it was also used to define the sphere of action of the local gentry rather than of the Imperial State, therefore appearing more similar to a Western concept of "civic space". On this, see Rankin 1993and Rowe 1993. 20 Kane 1990 "You Don't Wear a Fur in Summer" kingdoms, empires and nations have constantly tended towards an ever wider unification -and anticipating the next steps of human evolution up to the attainment of its final stage.…”

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confidence: 99%

“You Don’t Wear a Fur in Summer”: Kang Youwei’s Impartial Words on Republicanism (1917) and the Fate of Chinese Democracy

Brusadelli

2017

Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques

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This article aims to discuss Kang Youwei's 康有為 (1858-1927) position on democracy and republicanism in China through the analysis of two major works of his late production: Datongshu 大同書 (Book of Great Concord, drafted in 1902, but only published posthumously in 1935) and Gonghe Pingyi 共和評議 (Impartial Words on Republicanism, 1917), seemingly presenting two opposite views on the same issue. Whereas in his most "esoteric" production, represented by the Datongshu, Kang prophesied the spread of democracy on a global scale (China included), he remained loyal to the prospect of a Chinese constitutional monarchy in his public appearances after 1911 -the same he had abortively sponsored during the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898. In 1917, playing an active role in the short and somehow farcical restoration of the last Manchu emperor on the throne orchestrated by warlord Zhang Xun, Kang published Impartial Words on Republicanism, a significant essay through which he intended to explain the apparent contradiction between his republican utopia on the one hand and his "imperial" project on the other. Through the translation and discussion of some extracts from the two aforementioned works, I will try to shed more light on Kang's complex views on the issue and on the ambivalence of his political and theoretical agenda. Finally, I will also suggest that Kang's reflections may appear to have been successively echoed by later intellectuals in the debate on the possibility and nature of a "Chinese democracy".

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Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere

Cited by 75 publications

References 13 publications

Male Subjectivities: The Idealization of the Democratic Public Sphere: Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988)

Male Subjectivities: The Idealization of the Democratic Public Sphere: Crossroads (1937) and The Trouble Shooters (1988)

Everyone a pamphleteer? Reconsidering comparisons of mediated public participation in the print age and the digital era

“You Don’t Wear a Fur in Summer”: Kang Youwei’s Impartial Words on Republicanism (1917) and the Fate of Chinese Democracy

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