Wang Mingming

Long before the Europeans reached the East, the ancient Chinese had elaborate and meaningful perspectives of the West. In this groundbreaking book, Wang explores their view of the West as other by locating it in the classical and imperial China, leading the reader through the history of Chinese geocosmologies and worldscapes. Wang also delves into the historical records of Chinese "world activities", journeys that began from the Central Kingdom and reached towards the "outer regions". Such analysis helps distinguish illusory geographies from realistic ones, while drawing attention to their interconnected natures. Wang challenges an extensive number of critical studies of Orientalist narratives (including Edward Said’s Orientalism), and reframes such studies from the directionological perspectives of an "iental" civilization. Most significantly, the author offers a fundamental reimagining of the standard concept of the other, with critical implications not only for anthropology, but for philosophy, literature, history, and other interrelated disciplines as well.

A Genealogy of Chinese Occidentalism

The West As the Other

Marek Hnatiak

A widely accepted critique of anthropology suggests that moder European colonialists assumed that conquering the world without a deep intellectual "penetration" into all "surviving" cultures and societies meant a failed victory. It was supposedly this consideration that deemed anthropology important after the mid-nineteenth century. Anthropology is thus seen as a science of "Man" understood in a special sense, namely the whole lot of cultures and societies of "the uncivilized peoples."

When it seemed to the King that he had lived there twenty or thirty years without thinking, of his own country, the magician again invited him to accompany him on an excursion. They came to a place where they could not see the sun and moon above them, nor the rivers and seas below them. Lights and shadows glared, till the King's eyes were dazzled and he could not look; noises echoed towards them till the King's ears hummed and he could not listen. Every member and organ loosened in terror, his thoughts ran riot and his spirits waned; and he asked the magician to let him go back. The magician gave him a push, and the King seemed to meteor through space.

So people look at you the same way they look up at Heaven.

I hope you can realize the expectations of Heaven.

Objects in nature are mutually related and at the same time mutually restrictive. When described in literature and art, the relationships and restrictions are usually disregarded, to make the realist writer or the artist seem idealist. But no matter how imaginary the poetic state (xugou zhijing) one may construct, the materials are bound to be sought in nature, and the construction must follow the laws of nature (ziran zhi faze). Thus an idealist is always also a realist.

The West As the Other quotes

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