HIST 2492 - [Europes Asia: Modern European Discourse on History and Subjectivity]

(crosslisted) ASIAN 2292
(HA-AS)

Spring. Next offered 2015-2016. 4 credits.

J. V. Koschmann.

Integral to modern European philosophies of history and the human subject is an image of Asian societies (or the “Orient”) as static and despotic. G. W. H. Hegel posited that China was the “childhood of history,” a land where “nothing subjective is recognized.” Marx tried to account for the apparent absence of historical change in India by developing the model of an “Asiatic mode of production,” and Max Weber searched in vain through Chinese religion and ethics for an analogue to the Protestant ethic. In this seminar, we will consider the Hegelian, Marxian, and Weberian theses in some detail, and then turn to some more recent Western constructs of East Asia. Along the way, we will reflect critically upon intellectual history as an approach to the past, the epistemological and ideological functions of cultural opposites, the relationship between theories of history and the practice of imperialism, and other relevant questions. The seminar is meant to provide an open and nonthreatening context in which students can gain experience in the interpretation and analysis of complex texts that are not only difficult and problematical but of seminal importance in the ongoing process of human self-understanding.