Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry

(Paperback)

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Opening a new window onto Chinese intellectual discourse, this book is a critical engagement with the issues, problems and meanings of contemporary Chinese intellectual thought. As key participants in these debates who have exercised a significant influence on the development of contemporary Chinese thought, the volume's contributors explore concerns over the role of the intellectual and the outcomes of knowledge production in the humanities. Masterfully translated, these essays provide a wide range of conflicting perspectives on contemporary Chinese intellectuality, yet they share in common the belief held by many Chinese intellectuals in the power of intellectual labour to shape and change social life. By showing how Western social and cultural theory as well as the May Fourth and pre-modern Confucian traditions are being adapted for contemporary Chinese intellectual use, the book highlights how Chinese academics have affirmed an independent critical role for themselves in post-Mao China and the scope of the knowledge industry that they have created and developed since 1979.

Reviews

[Voicing Concern] raises large and important theoretical issues concerning and concerned with cultural and intellectual production. It is an engaging read and this significant collection will be of great value to scholars of modern China. * Journal of Asian Studies *
A welcome addition to the growing corpus of translations from contemporary Chinese discussions of culture and society. The volume should be useful not only to cultural studies scholars but for teaching purposes. * Asian Studies Review *
Allows readers, in this era of economic globalization, access to some of the dimensions of current worldwide intellectual debates as they get played out in China. * The China Journal *
This collection of translations represents a valiant attempt to help Western readers peek into China's diverse, if not confusing, intellectual life during the 1990s. Unlike the preceding decade, the 1990s have not yet attracted much scholarly attention in the West. * Choice Reviews *

Author Bio

Gloria Davies is senior lecturer in Chinese at Monash University.