Forget Chineseness

Allen Chun is Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He is the author of Unstructuring Chinese Society: The Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of "Land" in the New Territories of Hong Kong.

"Forget Chineseness covers an important topic that continues to stir debate among Chinese-speaking communities … It will add much to discussion of globalisation, identity formation, capitalism, imperialism, and modernity, among other themes, in graduate seminars … Chun's book is a timely reminder of how global and historical phenomena continue to shape identification, a process that is certainly not limited to 'Chineseness' but applicable to other presumed identities as well." — Journal of Contemporary Asia"Readers who have not previously encountered Chun's work will find important insights on the political projects of Chineseness over three decades. Readers who are familiar with Chun's scholarship will benefit from having these texts in a single volume. Forget Chineseness would work well for teaching at the graduate level, and is a useful contribution for scholars of China, cultural studies, critical theory, modernity, and global studies." — Pacific Affairs"It is rare that one reads a book that so thoroughly challenges so many commonly held basic assumptions. For this reason, this book evades succinct summarization and is best read carefully, perhaps twice over. Anyone who takes the time to do so will find the way that one talks and thinks about 'China' forever changed." — The China Quarterly"Forget Chineseness does not only contribute astute observations for scholars in Asian or Cultural Studies, it is also an important book for postcolonial theorists. The book's importance is in its problematisation of prevailing notions of identity, culture and Chineseness as well as its invitation for postcolonial scholars to think beyond oppositional discourses. Chun's voice is strong, passionate and bold; his call to explore as well as transcend identity politics of Chineseness, if not already heeded, will be followed by many." — Postcolonial Studies"…a good example of disentangling complicated historical materials and presenting ambiguous identities in a relatively constructive way." — Cultural Sociology

• PrefaceIntroduction Part I. Postwar, Post-Republican Taiwan: Civilizational Mythologies in the Politics of the Unreal1. Chineseness, Literarily Speaking: The Burden of Tradition in the Making of Modernity2. The Moral Cultivation of Citizenship as Acculturating and Socializing Regime3. The Coming Crisis of Multiculturalism: When the Imagined Community Hits the FanPart II. Hong Kong Betwixt and Between: The Liminality of Culture Before the End of History4. Hong Kong before Hong Kongness: The Changing Genealogies and Faces of Colonialism5. Critical Cosmopolitanism in the Birth of Hong Kong Place-Based "Identity"6. Hong Kong’s Embrace of the Motherland: Economy and Culture as Fictive CommoditiesPart III. The Reclamation of National Destiny: On the Unbearable Heaviness of Identity7. From the Ashes of Socialist Humanism: The Myth of Guanxi Exceptionalism in the PRC8. A New Greater China: The Demise of Transnationalism and Other Great White Hopes9. Confucius, Incorporated: The Advent of Capitalism with PRC CharacteristicsPart IV. Who Wants to Be Diasporic? The Fictions and Facts of Critical Ethnic Subjectivity 10. The Yellow Pacific: Diasporas of Mind in the Politics of Caste Consciousness11. Ethnicity in the Prison House of the Modern Nation: The State in Singapore as Exception12. The Postcolonial Alien in Us All: Asian Studies in the International Division of LaborAfterwordAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex