Wang Mingming

Long before the Europeans reached the East, the ancient Chinese had elaborate and meaningful perspectives of the West. In this groundbreaking book, Wang explores their view of the West as other by locating it in the classical and imperial China, leading the reader through the history of Chinese geocosmologies and worldscapes. Wang also delves into the historical records of Chinese "world activities", journeys that began from the Central Kingdom and reached towards the "outer regions". Such analysis helps distinguish illusory geographies from realistic ones, while drawing attention to their interconnected natures. Wang challenges an extensive number of critical studies of Orientalist narratives (including Edward Said’s Orientalism), and reframes such studies from the directionological perspectives of an "iental" civilization. Most significantly, the author offers a fundamental reimagining of the standard concept of the other, with critical implications not only for anthropology, but for philosophy, literature, history, and other interrelated disciplines as well.

A Genealogy of Chinese Occidentalism

The West As the Other

Stephan Feuchtwang

This book relates the stories of four leaders under very different political regimes: Colonial, Nationalist and Communist. The authors compare Chinese notions of respect and inspiration with their equivalents in other religious and political histories of colonial and post-colonial modernity, thereby producing a thorough re-working of the idea of charisma. The result is an intriguing study of the relationship between religious and political authority in a changing world.

Wang Mingming

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