Can the Chinese Nation Be One? Gu Jiegang, Chinese Muslims, and the Reworking of Culturalism

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6007797
AutoresLeigh Kathryn Jenco (0000-0001-7249-7843, London School of Economics and Political Science, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen45
Número6
Páginas595-628
Fecha de publicación2019-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern China (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0097700419828017
OpenAlexW2922735801
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas36

This article examines how the classicist and folklorist Gu Jiegang, in conversation with his Hui (Chinese Muslim) colleagues at the Yugong study society and journal (published 1934–1937), theorized the “Chinese nation” ( Zhonghua minzu) as an internally plural and open-ended political project, to resist homogenizing claims by both Japanese imperialists and the ruling Chinese Nationalist party under Chiang Kai-shek in the 1930s. Echoing the struggles of his Hui colleagues to articulate their place in the nation as both Muslim and Chinese, Gu reworked traditional “culturalist” assumptions about the non-racial character of identity formation to pose minority experience as constitutive of a constantly expanding and transforming political community. When Gu asserted in his notorious 1939 essay that the “ Zhonghua minzu Is One,” he posed a unity built not on cultural assimilation or ethnic identity, but on a shared political commitment to an expansive and culturally hybrid concept of the “Chinese nation

Aesthetics · Culturalism · Ethnic group · Identity (music · Multiculturalism · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies