Wang Ning | Postmodernity, Postcoloniality, and Globalization: A Mainly Chinese Cultural and Literary Perspective

Abstract

This essay is the author’s continuous study of globalization. From a Chinese and Marxist perspective, the author offers his reconstruction of globalization: (1) as a way of global economic operation; (2) as a historical process; (3) as a process of financial marketization and political democratization; (4) as a critical concept; (5) as a narrative category; (6) as a cultural construction and; (7) as a theoretic discourse. To the author, only by observing globalization from the above seven, or even more, angles can one grasp the characteristic features of globalization in a comprehensive way. In the age of globalization, postmodernism should be and actually has more or less been redefined in regard to its critical and creative reception in some Oriental and Third World countries. Chinese postmodernity manifests itself in a way more and more closely related to the global postcolonial movement. Confronted with various challenges raised by
globalization, Chinese intellectuals should use globalization in an opposite way, that is, to globalize Oriental and Chinese culture in theworld. In this sense, they ought to have more communications and dialogues with the international community rather than maintain an oppositional attitude toward the West.

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