Academic memoirs are a bit like autobiographies of aging porn stars: fascinating to those who follow the business closely, incomprehensible to those who don’t, and a perfect place to name all the people who screwed you on your way to the top.
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There are many books about coming to China and about the whacky adventures of laowai as they transition from excitement to confusion to redemption. It’s a genre unto itself. But few talk about the experience with the warmth and emotion of Alan Paul’s new book Big in China. I highly recommend Ian Johnson’s review of the post-revisions National Museum of China. “Few countries can compete with China in so completely suppressing the shades of gray about their past.” The New York Times published an article about Han Han last week. In the article, Graham Lee, a Hong Kong native studying in Peking University was quoted saying “His way of thinking is different from that of ordinary Chinese.” At first glance, this sentence sounds offensive. How do ordinary Chinese think? However, thinking for a second, I am not surprised that he felt this way. In any other country, I don’t think Han Han would be that special. His criticisms and the courage to challenge authority, even the having the balls to drop out of high school, are common characteristics of young people around the world. He is a very good writer, that’s for sure, but in most places his writing wouldn’t be enough to make him one of the most popular bloggers and an iconic figure. However, in China, what Han Han says and does has value. When I was in college, I was a fan of Han Han. His books opened my eyes and mind. For the first time in my life, I realized students could criticize and analyze profoundly the problems of the China’s education system. His words were harsh, but they were just so true. Throughout |
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Copyright © 2012 Jottings from the Granite Studio - All Rights Reserved
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Criticism, Critical Analysis, and Hurt Feelings
Reading about a new book by Stefan Collini: That’s Offensive! Criticism, Identity, Respect.
Professor Collini is a professor of intellectual history and English literature at Cambridge University, and in this, his latest book, he looks at the very meaning of criticism, what it means to criticize, and distinguishes the most common understanding of the term (“fault-finding”) with it’s more academic usage, that is the close analysis of a particular subject or text.
Scott McLemee’s short review for Inside Higher Education notes, quite correctly, that in an increasingly poisonous and rancorous atmosphere for the public debate of important topics, understanding the goals and rhetoric of criticism is an important first step to overcoming the resistance to listening to a critical analysis of our own cherished ideas and views. (In the Levensonian language of Modern China, not to let ideas about “what is mine” prevent me from hearing “what might be true.”)
Of course, thinking of this through Levenson, it’s hard not to recall the rather prickly response on the part of the Modern Chinese state (and their supporters and advocates) to recent criticism of their handling of the Nobel Prize. In a recent Global Times masterpiece with the whimsical title of