New Perspectives on Chinese Collaboration
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2132502 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Margherita Zanasi (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | S9 |
| Pages | 174-182 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Japan focus (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1557-4660 • E-ISSN: 1557-4660 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1557466014026333 |
| OpenAlex | W4410183857, W4410181278 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The question of moral judgment looms large over every discussion of World War II collaboration, at times clouding and distorting our understanding of this complex issue, as Timothy Brook poignantly remarks in his contribution to this journal's recent symposium. This moral question is certainly relevant and should not be dismissed, since collaboration came to be more or less directly associated with the civic and human rights infringements perpetrated by the occupying forces. Always complex, this question becomes murkier when linked to the rhetoric of patriotism and to postwar political agendas, as is the case with the "resistentialist" postwar narrative that has dominated the debate on collaboration until recently. This narrative has mythologized resistance and enshrined it as the only patriotic, moral, and honorable response to foreign occupation, gliding over difficult moral dilemmas raised by some strategies and practices of resistance. In the process, it has polarized the debate on collaboration by offering only two opposite and monolithically-conceived categories: moral and patriotic resistance versus unethical and treasonous collaboration. It has therefore left no conceptual tool for gaining a more nuanced understanding of behaviors that do not fit this pre-established and rigid dichotomy, such as "nationalist" or "state-building" collaborationism-referring, respectively, to attempts at protecting nation and population from the occupying forces and at state building in the face of the complete and bewildering disappearance of the preexisting order, as in the cases discussed by Brook. Finally, this resistentialist narrative has constructed a universal image of collaboration, which tends to reduce various forms of this phenomenon in different countries to a common denominator, obliterating all political, social, and cultural differences
Political science · Chinese history and philosophy · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Citations per year | 0.21 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2018 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |