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Two Sets of Fundamental Issues Concerning Public Knowledge
To understand the essence and trends of social transformation, it is obviously necessary to compare, analyze, and explain theoretically the similarities and differences between the above-mentioned legal discursive field in contemporary China and the critical and popular discussions in traditional rural communities (xiang-ping-qing-yi).Thus we should consider and address the following two sets of issues.The first set of issues addresses the following: what are the mechanisms of generating local knowledge that may be used in modern state-building as well as in denationalizing political reforms; what kind of changes have taken place in the legal discursive field, especially concerning its structure and function; what kind of features should dialogue, popular opinion and public knowledge possess to suit the needs of this new age, etc.The second set of issues includes: how has the “web of meaning” has been rearranged in the course of this structural transformation of the public sphere from peasant to civil society; how much have the speech rules of Confucian politics of public opinion been revised and replaced (including both the formal discussions with a sovereign at court (chaoyi) and the informal discussions among the local elites or at magistrate’s informal advisory council (qingyi), e.g., no free discussing among commoners (shu-ren-bu-yi) but in the Imperial College, academies of classical learning and recluse scholars; how can the interpretative turn in the traditional system of social values be actualized, and so on.
Prof. Philip C. C. Huang historically analyzed and presented insight into these issues, using the category of “the third realm between state and society” to address the questions of negotiations, mediation in civil litigations, as well as the dual structure of representation and practice in the Qing dynasty.His work deserves commendation for revealing the correlative interactions of the traditional legal process between the bureaucratic state and local society.Nevertheless, a few points still remain unanswered, such as the degree of free speech in the old-style tribunal that merged as an integral whole with the state organs.In fact, the typical phenomenon of “the third realm between state and society” can be located in the overlapping parts of kinship and the King’s law in local society, especially in the domain of “mass contracting of the community articles (ji-zhong-li-yue)” or village pacts, i.e., in the process of shaping public knowledge and norms based on discussion and consensus.It is also worth noting that the practice of rural grassroots self-governance and elections from the 1980s inherit, to a certain extent, this traditional society’s “contract order,” and may provide some clues to understand the structural transformation of public sphere from peasant to civil society.
As for the second set of issues, it is necessary to analyze the changes in the power of speech and symbolic patterns, examine the formation and developments of popular or public opinions concerning social revolution, and explain the relationship between institutional ideology and social discourse from the angle of semantics.Generally speaking, the basic features of public knowledge formation in 20th century China may be summarized as the following.Because the vanguard party, as leading nucleus of social revolution and mass movements, had already removed the obstacle of Confucian speech rules that had been hindering free discussions among the common people, as a result, a kind of discourse space, somewhat similar to the so-called“plebian public sphere,” opened up to a certain extent in both non-governmental and governmental sectors.Two aspects of the correlative interaction of state and society can be seen here.On one hand, we notice that individuals become increasingly self-assertive and self-dependent, the common people began to concern themselves with state affairs and join political discussion at small-scale forums of “letting everyone have his/her say” mass meetings.However, we also notice that the government side has been working toward political mobilization, by methods of educational dialogues to “overcome selfishness and foster public spirit (po-si-li-gong)”, study classes for self-realization or self-remolding, performing arts propaganda teams, theatrical festivals and other kind of consent cultures based on mass organization of leisure.
What emerged from these “plebian public sphere”-like discursive venues are “people’s public opinion (ren-min-gong-lun)” and “people’s public pledge (ren-min-gong-yue)”.Correspondingly, the “feedback-based” decision-making process “to pool the wisdom and efforts of everyone” and “from the people, to the people,” the reflective discussion of “criticism and self-criticism”, and the diverse strategies of discourse for the transformation of social conflicts also arose.Given the scenario above (despite the physical and linguistic violence of politics based on belligerent philosophy as well as the method for class classification), a new type of social order of contracts emerges from the public discussions of cooperative and non-cooperative dialogue as well as repeated adjustments for harmonization.Now I will provide a detailed exposition on these two sets of issues.
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