Haun Saussy on History-Writing and Moral Community in China

The third in Haun Saussy’s series of De Carle Lectures, delivered in Dunedin, New Zealand, on Thursday, 2 October 2014, is now available for download as an MP3 or MP4. In “History-Writing and Moral Community in China,” Saussy argues that, “the Chinese claim, seen with increasing frequency in current soft-power propaganda campaigns, of ‘5000 years of history’ needs to be read in light of a process, over 2000 years long itself, of consensus-building by, of and for historians. How does such a thing as the Chinese Empire become, first an imaginary solution, then an inescapable reality, for a large part of humanity? The arts of rhetorical reading help us to see the successive articulations of what we now know as ‘China’ or ‘Zhongguo.'” Saussy’s first two lectures can be downloaded here. His fourth and final lecture will be posted shortly.