期刊名称：Fragments : Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts
印刷版ISSN：2161-8585
电子版ISSN：2161-8585
出版年度：2011
卷号：1
出版社：MPublishing
摘要：Miranda Brown’s “Returning the Gaze: An Experiment in Reviving Gu Yanwu (1613–1682)” offers the intriguing possibility of not only “provincializing Europe” but also providing an important analytical perspective through which a comparative history of pre-modern states might be attempted. It is precisely because Gu Yanwu’s work does not have the universalist ambitions of modern European theorists that his intervention into one of the primary sites of tension between empires and their subjects—the often vexed relationship between a centralizing imperial core and the administrative periphery resistant to such integration—may be investigated. Three aspects of Gu Yanwu’s proposed reforms offer rich possibilities for thinking about some of the persistent problems that have plagued the study of medieval and early modern states: first, Gu Yanwu’s interest in harnessing the familial and similar affective ties as the model for successful state building; second, Gu Yanwu’s emphasis on proof of a shared normative code of ethical behavior as the most important evaluative criteria for imperial recruitment; and lastly Gu Yanwu’s attempts to mediate the utopian emphasis on such internalized restraints of individual officers with pragmatic structural mechanisms of control within an administrative system.[1] These elements capture both the ambivalence towards the depersonalized authority of new bureaucratic states and the yearning for more meaningful political association that haunts both early modern and modern communities.
