Thank you so much Helena to you and your team for making this possible. And thank you so much to my dear colleague Wang Hui for taking time this afternoon. I know this is a busy time of year at Tsinghua and the Institute for Advanced Studies. So, I really appreciate your willingness to take the time.
One of the things that I, like many others, deeply appreciate about Professor Wang Hui's work is the biographical self-reflexivity, the willingness to ask the question of how his thought, how our thought is located in time. And with that in mind, I would say that I too, and my interest in China, am radically shaped by my biography, by my age, by the moment of my birth.
I graduated in the summer of 1989 and having grown up in West Germany, where I went was West Berlin in the summer of 1989. So, my experience of 1989 was on the one hand of course an eye-opening because of the such dramatic events in this city here. But also then a kind of re-provincialization as a result of the way in which Europeans were sucked into our version of the end of the Cold War, which for me and for so many other West Europeans was a very profound shock or opening.
And I stopped there in part by way of part apology, part explanation for the fact that it took me so long to get to China.
But it wasn't really until the 2000s and it was in fact by dealing close dealings with global capitalism. It was by way of close working with the British oil major British Petroleum that my very Eurocentric vision of the world was shaken into a much larger, into much larger dimensions.
And it was really in my third book, the one that was mentioned that has been translated into Chinese in the M series with Imaginist Deluge, that I drove myself and challenged myself to write an encompassing history of what in China of course is known as the May Fourth moment, in Europe is known as the moment of the Treaty of Versailles and what Germans call the Urkatastrophe, the original crisis, the founding crisis of the 20th century.
And becoming acquainted with your work, I realized that to that extent our starting point is the same. It's in that early 20th century crisis and the question then of how one writes the history. There's that great Osip Mandelstam poem about a broken-backed century, about this rupture of the joint in the early 20th century.
And reading your work, I was really re-reading some of your essays in the '90s and the 2000s about 20th century Chinese history. I was really struck by this theme that you developed there of a return of the 19th century, right? So, you have this short 20th century, a little bit like Eric Hobsbawm, but Eric Hobsbawm inexplicably was interested in India, but not interested in China. It's really shocking. Only a few pages. Few pages. E.P. Thompson the same, deeply invested in India, oblivious to China. Yeah. Impossible in France because of Maoist influence. Anyway, Eric Hobsbawm has this short 20th century history centered on the revolutionary epoch. Yeah. And you say maybe a way of understanding our moment now is that it's a return of the 19th century. Mhm.
And I really wanted to ask you about how that interpretation feels now in the mid-2020s. Because I totally see how it might have been compelling in the 1990s, 2000s, the Fukuyama moment. You pick up with that one of Lu Xun's early essays where he says we are going to break with the double 19th century logic of industrialization and democracy. The 20th century is going to be something else. That something else will be the revolution. That ends and we end in the 19th century. Or sorry, we end the 20th century gives way in the late 1990s to a return of the 19th century. But where are we now? And I ask that against the backdrop I recently finished a book about the environmental crisis, the climate crisis. And I wonder whether from the vantage point of the Anthropocene that idea of a return to the 19th century is not a little bit too harmless. Yeah.
And I really want to get this into dialogue. Maybe this is where the three of us talking is cumbersome. But to me this axis in part on the category of the economic, which in your work like in so much other criticism of the neoliberal epoch, you know, you pick up on Schmitt's critique of neutralization, the economy is foregrounded, ideology is repressed, we move into this zone of developmentalism, Deng Xiaoping, development is the hard truth. This kind of logic. But if you look at China's development from an environmental perspective, this is not the old development, right? This is development which is transforming the planet. If you look at the history of coal, coal, I mean coal, coal stuff. There are three areas, three eras in human history. There's the pre-industrial revolution, there's the classic industrial revolution, and then there's China. After 2000, not even in the 1980s and 1990s, but after 2000, right? That's it just explodes into a new dimension. A kind of hyper-industrialism of a type that Marx could not have envisioned. This is so much more radical. And so I kind of that is where I'd love to hear where your thinking is now on this question where we're in the 2020s.
Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks for the organizer and the Beijing Center of Columbia University for these events. Last years we read the two short ending at the beginning it was in English, but now that we can read it in Chinese in time. So that I became familiar with your discourse and all arguments for that. I think that the basically the let me start it up from your last points. Now we are facing the situation so called the anthropocene situation. And the post of that especially the planetary constraints that the ecological crisis that now the sources and the digressions became inevitable. So here and there. So in these case it was a radically different from early stage for following the growth the only focusing on the great economic growth. So that's obviously the big change. I think that the that kind of the situation is especially the prospect itself reshapes our idea of so called the history. It just reshapes our idea of so called history because basically the history is really started from our own narrative, but those narrative almost collapsed now because of we are facing the serious challenge. So I think that the I guess that the your question is also along this line to to think about this.
Here I try to think about some footnotes for that idea 20th century 19th century. Basically in China we have no 19th century to some extent at all because the basically the idea of the century was only emerged in the beginning of 20th century. That I wrote the long essay about Liang Qichao where he exiled in Honolulu in 1899 there by the last day of that he wrote a long poem which entitled the song of the 20th century Pacific. That the in the whole history that was the first time to define the China's position in the world history with two characteristic characters two vocabulary or the concepts. One is 20th century. Another was Pacific. The whole last more than 2000 years nobody used this kind term to label China. So in that sense the 18th century 20th century for me was the right verses the vocabulary from the 20th century rebuilding of our prehistory that the pre-20th century history from down. So in that sense the the 20th century in the whole Chinese history it's quite a singular. It's very different from all old the the any kind of dynasties for example. The first four is convey us very strong sense of the synchronicity global synchronicity. It's almost not possible to find China only with its own past. The all others became our past became our history. In that sense this new beginning define the concept of the history itself. So that's I think that's very important for understanding Chinese history that's this is the first.
Second when I say that the in the 1990s that was a certain kind of the new liberal tide globally huge impact on China. So for the developmentalism and so on and so forth. And a lot if you look at it that time the pollution the late 19th early years of the this century was in here in Beijing was so serious. It's already showed the restriction and limits of the growth already there. And also at that that's was the time when we think about that the how the in the before that we all embraced the so called the globalization as a last stage of the opening policy. That was the the whole atmosphere. But now I think there's a huge change for that. I think that the you you talking you talked about the for example the the whole the the the concept of like a 20th 19th century for example especially the Eric Hobsbawm he talked about 20th century as extremes that the the age of extremes compared to the 19th century. That the 19th century basically is the revolutionary and so that's why I quite innovative a lot of the new ideas still were continued for years like democracy market economy and so on and so forth. For him the 20th century was a very limits for that. But in China I think the 20th century still very important as you mentioned that the May 4th and so on and so forth. All the other sequence still became the energy to reform our era. So that basically when I think about the return to the 19th century mean that the it's it's something that we try to overcome. Yeah. Come back. We were overcome by it. So how can we face this new situation? And also as we said that the all the so called the return as a repetition means something new. So that was we need to integrate it the new situation here that the to to think about our future here. So the double face of that the one is that when you say that we talking about like the global or the planetary constraints and rethink about the anthropocene the situation and so on and so forth. But on the other hand we thought that the the so many different the actors players come back to the stage currently looks like the repeat of the 19th century. For example the war the imperialism and the reshoring policy in America means that the re-industrialization and so on and so forth. It's a kind of the repetition of the 19th century even we know that it's almost impossible if truly possible in that way without any kind of new thinking that eventually that could be disastrous not only for for everywhere. So this is a kind of the the new paradoxical situation. That's why I think about this.
Yes, you're really one could almost there's two different lines that go out from that, right? One is one is watching the Trump people. It's almost as though they think they can safely reenact the 19th century. And the horror is that we're of course not in the we're not even in the 20th century. We're in something a world which is much more dangerous, but they would like to do William McKinley. They would like to do the Monroe Doctrine. They would like to seize Cuba and have their way with it. They would like to do gunboat diplomacy, but we're actually in the 21st century. So then you run into Iran which really isn't Persia of 1907 or eight, right? It's But then the other thought I was having as you were speaking and hearing you formulate your thesis around the historicity of modern China in the way that you just did gives me another vantage point on the centrality of China as a place for thinking modernity because if you think about Western philosophies of history in the 20th century their experience though the Europeans and the West comes into the 20th century with what they think is a solid philosophy of history by 1939 1940 and Benjamin be our witness Walter Benjamin be our witness Adorno be our witness this is catastrophically disintegrating. Yes. So, to to come into the 20th century with the baggage of a consolidated 19th century European conception of history is in some sense a handicap. Yeah. Right? Or or and it's a and it's it's a model that can also lead you in rather particular directions. Like Stalin will act out a particular kind of line, right? And in some senses China disencumbered of the burden of a 19th century, in your terms, becomes a space for a kind of radicalism in thinking about history and a and a really radical notion of revolutionary action then all the way through the Cultural Revolution. The the by the late '60s the Europeans are watching, right? Because the they at that moment at least understood where the truly radical dynamic of unfolding So, if we Yeah, okay. Right, this is a That is a very powerful way of reconceiving the 20th century from a Chinese vantage point. I guess it then asked that would beg the question of how events like the Holocaust, Mhm. which are so paradigm-busting for European conception of history, how do they figure in the Chinese Chinese thinking of that of that of that disruption of of history in the 20th century?
Um the first of all, I think that the when we say that the from Chinese perspective to rethink about 20th century, it's it's already in the sense of the so-called asynchronicity or the simultaneities. >> Yeah. So, if we read the the early writings in the early 20th century, those Chinese thinkers, they already think about the those serious issues of Walter Benjamin or some others, Adorno. They already think about if you compare some essays articles by like a Lu Xun and those people, it already predicted these kind of things. They are even Lu Xun is a early generation in the far away from European history, partly because at that time when they think about the Chinese destiny or the the future of China was already integrated all these history into our own history. The reason think about this. So, even that was a pre-industrial era, but they are truly think about the post-industrial era, what will happen to that. That were later maybe I can introduce some pieces at that time they think about the Germany, for example. Those people write about Germany and write about America and they write about the Russia and so on and so forth. And also huge debates among the Chinese intellectuals on those issues. This is the one.
Second, for the Holocaust is another issue because it's a so singular event in the European history that obviously after the World War II became the so the the dominant perspective to understand the 20th century history. If we read the the Eric Hobsbawm and those people, that was very much the the the it occupied a high the position to think about the the so-called history. And because it can think that it was a rupture completely up rupture, but on the other hand is a kind of the form of history in that that case to think about this. So, that was obviously for from Chinese perspective on the one hand after the the the World War II, the the Holocaust issue together with the anti-fascist issue what became dominant in China. And also in the Chinese perspective, they also think about the the global history, how to compare the events happening in China and in Germany. For example, the Nanjing Massacre, Mhm. why not have never been attracted the so much attention and like the Holocaust has been theorized, historicized in as a historical singular moment to rethink about the history. That kind of the events in the non-European, especially the in Asia, never been used. Even people talking about that, sometimes they use the lens of like a Frankfurt School and some others thinking about the Holocaust to talk about China and to talk about these kind of the events, but nevertheless, this is still not the same situation. This is the one issue. Second, Holocaust is a huge issue. But if you look at the the Chinese periodization that from the Opium War, like the the Mao used to famously argue that was a modern history started from Opium War. And in that case, the the whole history that of course Germany played a certain role, but Britain, Russia, Japan were much more important than Germany in those times there, let's let's say. So, the global history, the whole historical narrative in that sense, so-called the Eurocentrism, so some sometimes is also because they overlook this one. And also you were I know the great scholar the historian in the World War I and World War II, and when we interpreted the World War I and World War II was downplayed other aspects for folks on that, especially after the World War II. So, that's the I think that the how the the vision and the perspective to understand the global history a little bit difference. And also that's also because why the like the historian like Eric Hobsbawm only used the two pages to talk about it 20th century China. Only few pages very little about that and folks on that other sides. That's the I think that the we think about the so-called the history historical issues. Yeah.
Do you think also that it has something to do with the coloration, you might say, or the the meanings of violence in the different contexts?
Um it's very striking in that Hobsbawm book how compared to the first three volumes of that classic history, which have a basic Marxist Marxist logic, Yes. forces relations of production driving us through, Age of Extremes is a catastrophic book, not just because it describes terrible things, but because also the Marxist logic is no longer working, right? The motive force of that book is violence in the first catastrophic half. But the violence itself is sort of indeterminate. It has a kind of force of its own, a logic of its own. It's industrialized, but it's never characterized in political terms, let alone really clearly related to class struggle or the class categories that are fundamental to the 19th century analytic and give Marxism its grip. And so, I wonder whether in China, because I know in in your thinking of the the radical 20th century, the category of people's war is absolutely pivotal. Yeah. Again, the significance of that, and it's also a heritage you could get from Lenin, but obviously in Mao it takes on this particular form, that means the violence is never separable from the politics and it's never separable from the question of class and inequality, right? It's There's never just cuz the temptation with the Holocaust of Auschwitz or places like that is this is the Primo Levi quote, 'Hier gibt es kein Warum.' Here there is no why. Yeah. There's no There's no logic. There's no There's just the destruction of Jewish people by their German by German perpetrators. And the and the the logic of people's war would seem to me to like cut across that and to insist Yeah. that no, this is meaningful in a profound way, right? It's constitutive of politics. It makes states. It builds political revolu- revolution even in its horror.
