The Image of China in the American Classroom

Professor Ban Wang of Stanford University will discuss how individualistic-egoistic assumptions about culture and globalization give rise to the pitfalls in presenting China in the American classroom.

Ban Wang, Professor, Asian Languages and Comparative Literature, Stanford University

Emotivism is a doctrine that evaluates all judgments, and especially moral judgments as nothing but expressions of preference, of private attitude or feeling. Consensus in moral judgment is not to be secured by rational discussion, persuasion or investigation of real states of affair. Rather it is to be secured by producing certain effects on the emotions or attitudes of those who disagree with one. In emotivism, the moral question of human purpose in culture or historical experience is turned into a theatrical, aesthetical matter, a media event, a visual titillation or an array of effects. Those who can marshal the techniques and deploy the rhetoric of emotional manipulation will prevail over those who disagree with me. 
What does this emotive stance have to do with the study of China or other cultures? If we extend the Kantian maxim “to treat someone as an end” and say we should “treat a nation or country as an end,” this would mean treating each sovereign nation and people as striving to achieve their own ends and as the master of their own fate. It would mean treating their culture, history, and growth not as an instrument of my private purposes, of my nation’s self-interest, with a view to my profits and pleasure. This talk will reflect how individualistic-egoistic assumptions about culture and globalization give rise to the pitfalls in presenting China in the American classroom. Focusing on how the emotivist, self-serving attitude ignores historically nuanced and complex pictures of China, the talk will explores global, geopolitical factors and liberal thinking that encourage students and scholars to see China as “my space.”