포스트사회주의 중국의 비판적 사상의 흐름과 문화연구 ― 리쩌허우-첸리췬-왕후이-왕샤오밍을 중심으로 ―

Abstract

China is reinforcing its censorship recently. It simply changed itsprevious ways of regulating everything to an indirect method ofexemplary punishment, which in fact appears to be even moreelaborative than before. Censorship inevitably induces censoring ofoneself, which usually has a stricter standard then when imposedby others. As witnessed with the Koreans, control cannot endurethe hardships of time. The prairie fire or underground fire exist atany era and when the conditions are right they may burn downthe prairie or everything above ground. This study compares the‘critical thoughts’ to this immense fire and sets up LI Zehou’stheory on history of thoughts as their source. It also takes note ofthe trend that covers the study on Mao Zedong’s ideology by QIANLiqun and WANG Hui’s study on history of modern thoughts. Alsoin the same context it reviews LI Tuo, DAI Jinhua and WANG Xiaoming who have advanced and carried out the critical culturalstudies. Of course they are not the only critical thoughts ofpost-socialist China. For instance, the discourse of East Asia bySUN Ge or the ‘Radicalism of a Century’ by WEN Tiejun can bepart of the discussion. This study shall consider LI Zehou as thestarting point and will review the ties and connections of criticalintellectuals who are assumably linked to LI Zehou contextually. In order to contemplate the ‘critical trend in the thoughts andcultural studies in post-socialist China, it is necessary to focus onLI Zehou who has shown his interest in the socialist utopiathoughts even before China opened its doors to the outer world. Because LI had to flee the country after the Tian An Menincident, his academic achievement was underestimated. Forinstance, his philosophical system was simplified to ‘a discourse onenlightenment’. Scrutinize carefully his thoughts on history ofthoughts, especially of contemporary age and it is evident he hasbeen tracing steps of countless intellectuals who have ponderedover the question of ‘where China is heading’ at a time when thepast and the present, the east and the west, and the left and theright were fused and mixed, tracing them with a focus on theirthoughts. LI finds historical significance of a person from the rolethe person played in that historical era while analyzing andassessing the person by how much this historical figure was awareof the era’s duty of ‘anti-feudalistic enlightenment’ and‘anti-imperialism national salvation’ and how faithfully he or shehas implemented them. While it is clear his text puts weight onthe anti-feudalistic enlightenment, it should be recognized hisenlightenment is measured by whether it is contributing to theprogress of history. Next to LI is QIAN Liqun, who has been speaking up his thoughts by establishing the field ofnongovernmental thought which is certainly not an easy task underthe current Chinese administration. WANG Hui who was muchregarded as the New Left still maintains a unique area of his ownstanding on the borderline of systems thus it is reasonable tocontemplate him as well. Additionally, cultural studies of Beijingand Shanghai is reviewed and analyzed with a focus on WANGXiaoming’s cultural studies. As a conclusion, LI Zehou insisted thatmodern science technology should be the platform to dismantle theChinese tradition with its stubborn pragmatic rationality thattranscends beyond time and place and LI was inspirational to ‘20thCentury Chinese Literature’ by QIAN Liqun and CHEN Sihe aswell as ‘ZhongguoXiandaiSixiangdeXingqi(中國現代思想的興起)’ byWANG Hui. Also, his study on the trend of Jindai socialist utopiadeems the perimeters of China’s progressive tradition larger thanthat of the Chinese Communist Party which provided a macroscopicview to the Chinese intellectuals. ‘ZhongguoXiandaiSixiangWenxuan(中國現代思想文選)’ by WANG Xiaoming is the direct result of it.