주체인가 제국인가 ― 왕후이(汪暉)의 ‘국가론’과 ‘정치론’ 읽기

Abstract

The concept ‘China’ has been fluxing through out the premodern and modern history of China. ‘China’ can be seen as a kind of essential concept, which means that ‘China’ has its essence, and cannot or should not be interpreted in terms of Western paradigm. But, on the other hand, we also cannot deny that ‘China’ always has been under the intercourses of various relationships, so ‘China’ could not be regarded as something essential. In terms of the universality and the particularity of ‘China’, Wang Hui’s theory of state and politics would be a very important theme. Wang hui in his books insisted that the transition of ‘China’ is very different from that of the ‘West,’ so it is necessary to re-appropriate ‘China’ in terms of China’s own historic context. In his theoretical terms, the process of transition of ‘China’ is described as ‘self transition of the Empire.’ At a glance, this Wang’s theoretical trial could be seen as a challenge against the universal theory which is derived from the ‘Western history.’ As we can see in Foucault’s works, ‘the Subject’ who decentralizes the site of sovereignty and acts as protestor was born in the discourses of 17th century of Europe. From this kind of view, we probably could say that ‘the Subject’, who is the main actor of modern democratic society and never approves the monopoly of sovereignty, is the product of Western discourses. In his historical research about the premodern and modern China’s intellectual discourses, Wang Hui wants to deconstruct the theory of modern ‘nation-state’ system which was formed in the experience of the West. However, we could find some theoretical vacuum in Wang Hui’s argument about the particularity of ‘China’: ‘the Subject.’ In fact, Wang Hui too strongly focuses on the particularity of ‘China’, so he missed or did not seriously considerate the role and the meaning of the subject in the modern democratic society. From this perspective, this article is going to critically contemplate Wang Hui’s theory of the state and the politics.