‘비판적’ 중국학의 딜레마: 21세기의과제와 중국을 바라보는 우리의 문제

Abstract

The one image that led the 21st century East Asia was ‘the West,’ the society of the Others. It has become the universal ideology of ‘modernity(現代性),’ which has introduced the modern socio-economic system of nation-state and capitalism to East Asia. There was only one difference between the routes China and Japan each chose: the former revolutionary socialism and the latter imperialism expressed in the slogan “Datsu-A Nyu-O”(脫亞入歐). Since Korea started constructing a modern nation-state only after experiencing of the colonialization and the division of territory, we tend to have a more complicated and distorted inner perspective with regard to the issues of foreign powers, national division, autocracy and democracy. In particular, such perspective has created confusion in understanding China which has gone through a different path from Korea. In order to overcome the confusion in our perspective and solve the problems syntonized in the 21st century, we need to we go back to the essential questions such as ‘nation’, ‘people’, and ‘human rights,’ and change our approach to the experience of the 20th century. It is important to get over the conflict between a thesis and an antithesis and turn to the dual thinking of Lu Xun(魯迅) that is expressed in his concept of “the intermediate”.