Joyce C. H. Liu

Immanentism, Double Abjection, and the Politics of Psyche in (Post)Colonial Taiwan

This essay discusses what I define as the psyche politics employed in the discourse of identity and of subjectivity in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), and how the use of such politics of psyche recurred in postcolonial Taiwan, especially in the discourse of the nativized Taiwanese subject of the recent decades under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government (1990s to 2008). I use psyche politics to refer to the discursive operations of molding, shaping, fashioning, policing, and governing of the interior essence of life.Through analyzing the discursive event triggered by Yoshinori Kobayashi’s graphic history On Taiwan, (Shin G manism Sengen Supesharu —Taiwan Ron) which appeared in 2001, and the discourse of self-effacement and self-abjection present in many literary texts, cultural policies, and public opinions during the Japanese colonial period, I point out that the discursive self-abjection, or the will to cleanse the uncleanliness of one’s heart, maneuvered and coerced through cultural regime, is indispensable for the formation of a non-I subject. More significantly, the discourse of the gong, the reverse side of the self-abjection, sets the frame of the spiritual totality to be shared by the individuals as parts of the whole. The two symbiotic states, self-abjection and the participation within the gong, constructed a particular mode of discourse of the psyche in East Asia during the Pacific War and paved the way for the frame of consciousness of the modern nation-state as well as the ground for subjectivation. Through such a discursive mode of psyche politics, a certain sense of community is engineered. We observe that the function of abjection operates in double directions: the internal effacement and the external exclusion. The locus of the gong, defined variously according to different contexts, which is often erected in the name of love in order to uphold the sense of community, paradoxically also serves the cause for cruelty and abjection against difference, both outside and inside the community.

Against Agamben: Sovereignty and the Void in the Discourse of the Nation in Early Modern China

In Kingdom and Glory, Agamben analyzed the dual perspective of the void, through the metaphor of the empty throne, in the governmental machine in the West. I engage with the ambiguous question of the void with regard to the concept of sovereignty through my reading of two Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing period, Liang Qichao (1872–1929) and Zhang Taiyan (1869–1936). This paper therefore addresses the question of sovereignty and the void in the discourse of nation in early modern China, an issue that is related to the problem of the political economy or the politics of life. I argue that the rhetorical move in Liang Qichao’s argument for the birth of a new nation and new people was to move from the not-having (無) to the there is (有) in support of the formation of a new nation-state and a restricted logic of sovereignty, while Zhan Taiyan’s position was to affirm the dynamitic re-composition of the void by constantly negating the given fixated state, and thus proposing a different and radical vision of nation and full sovereignty of the lives of each and every one of the people who are co-inhabiting in the polis.

Force of Psyche: Electricity or Void? Re-examination of the Hermeneutics of the Force of Psyche in Late Qing China

The aim of this paper is to discuss the contrasting hermeneutics concerning the concept of psyche among the late Qing intellectuals. Late Qing intellectuals developed a mode of hermeneutics that viewed xin li, or ”psyche force,” as utilizable, tamable, self-adaptable (in the manner of electricity) and capable of evolving. Also, the ”weak mind” has to be exercised as a muscle and all socalled ”vile thoughts” must be erased. This Christianized version of the psyche descends, at least in part, from some of the vast range of western knowledge which was introduced into China during the modernization movement, mostly through second-hand translations (based on Japanese translations), as well as through translations by the missionaries in China. John Fryers Zhixin mianbingfa (治心免病法A Method for the Avoidance of Illness by Controlling the Mind), published in Shanghai in 1896, was the first text that introduced the term xin li (心力) into the Chinese contexts and represented the emblematic text of this trend of hermeneutics. Liang Qichao fully absorbed this mode of interpretation and elaborated the concept of xin li in such a way that this utilizable and tamable force of psyche could be governed and exercised so as to save the nation and to create a new people. Tan Sitong, though a close friend to Liang Qichao and a member of the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898 and died as a martyr, held a totally different concept of xin li. In his Buddhist-inspired vision of the xin li, the force of psyche was presented as void, a site for ”microappearing- disappearing,” that was possible of subverting any fixed nominal system. This paper discusses the political implications in Tans anarchistic vision of xin li. This paper argues that Lacans topological formulation of the psyche and ex-sistenceas well as Alain Badious concept of void and the force of subtraction can help us explicate the radicality of Tans notions of the psyche.