Roles of Western Learning in Fevers of National Learning in Twentieth-Century China

Abstract

China in the twentieth century has witnessed two fevers of national learning. One refers to the movement of “Rearranging the National Heritage” in the 1920s; the other is a comprehensive revival of national learning in the academic, public and political fields in the 1990s. Western Learning plays an important role in the specialization and re-popularization of national studies in two fevers. This chapter offers a comparative study on the changing roles in producing and reproducing knowledge about Chinese history and culture. In the 1920s, the Western Learning’s profound impacts on the paradigmatic shift of national learning could be seen through the following aspects: the original idea of reorganization, the scientific spirit and methodology, the adoption of a western model of discipline and classification. These impacts stimulate an attempt to separate scholarship from politics, and pursue apolitical, neutral and universal scholarship. In the 1990s, Western Learning prepares the re-rise of national learning both the methodological and the ideological tools. The influences are embodied by: facilitating the rise of political and cultural conservatism, questioning universality of enlightenment modernity as well as seeking for an alternative modernity, and re-Confucianizing the national learning.

By comparison, the first fever of national learning marks a paradigmatic shift from traditional scholarship to modern scholarship by specialization, scientization, and de-ideologicalization, while the second fever has seen a conservative turn, essentialization and re-ideologicalization of national learning. As the discourse of national learning shifts its focus from modernity to alternative modernity, the standard for selecting and applying Western learning also changes from universality to particularity, from pure scholarship to ideological device.