Knowledge Circles (知識界) in Colonial Hong Kong 1945-1997: From Offshore Publics to Civic Communities
Speaker: Prof. Sebastian Veg, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris
Monday, 11 March 2024, 17:30-19:00 PDT
Room 120, C.K. Choi Building, UBC
1855 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
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Join us for this in-person talk by Prof. Sebastian Veg, Professor of Intellectual History of 20th Century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, and author of Minjian: the Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals (Columbia University Press, 2019), about his latest study on knowledge circles in Hong Kong between 1945 and 1997.
In the talk, Prof. Veg will retrace how academics, journalists, writers, and students produced and circulated knowledge during the colonial era and how they engaged broader communities of readers. The talk will also present an attempt to disentangle the impact of various epistemic systems such as Cold War liberalism, Chinese cultural nationalism, and colonial ideology.
In-person event. All are welcome. Registration required.
Abstract:
On the basis of published sources such as newspapers and student journals, as well as colonial archives and selected memoirs, this presentation tries to outline how academics, journalists, writers and students produced and circulated knowledge during the colonial era, and how they engaged broader communities of readers. It will try to disentangle the impact of various epistemic systems such as Cold War liberalism, Chinese cultural nationalism, and colonial ideology. It will also emphasize the role of institutions within Hong Kong society that served as vectors for the knowledge produced by intellectuals (newspapers, journals, universities, civil society organizations) and the reading publics that intellectuals reached through their writings.
The talk will focus on methodological and documentary aspects of studying knowledge circles in a colonial and Cold War Setting, sources, and chronology. The timeframe is organized around the changing knowledge regimes in three periods. In the post-war years (1945-66) the argument will focus on the moral authority of elite intellectuals grounded in Confucian ideals in the context of the incipient Cold War. In the second period (1966-1979), the moral authority of the elites was challenged by social movements dominated by different types of anti-colonial ideas. In the third segment (1979-1997), the focus will be on the debate around democratic reunification in the lead-up to the Joint Declaration, and how it was challenged after 1989.
About the Speaker:
Sebastian Veg is a Professor (directeur d’études) of intellectual history of 20th century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris. He was director of the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) in Hong Kong from 2011 to 2015 and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong from 2011 to 2022.
His doctoral research was devoted to literary and political debates about modernism and democracy in the May Fourth era (Fictions du pouvoir chinois. Littérature, modernisme et démocratie au début du xxe siècle, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2009), followed by a second project on the new intellectuals in China since the 1990s (Minjian: the Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals, Columbia UP, 2019). He was the co-principal investigator for a France-Hong Kong research grant on “New Approaches to the Mao Era: everyday history and popular memory,” and editor of Popular Memories of the Mao Era (Hong Kong University Press, 2019).
This event is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative with the support of the Watt Family—Hong Kong Studies Initiative Fund, the Department of Asian Studies, and the Centre for Chinese Research.
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