Yuk Hui

One of the most broadly rewarding things I've read in a long time. A fuller review to come later; I can't possibly fit in all my thoughts on it in the short time I've got.

One very simple note: one question that this book brought up for me was "why tradition?" Why does China have to develop its response to modernity from a historical Chinese cosmology? If it's true that the ties to past systems of belief have been completely severed, isn't the situation so far gone that we might as well start from scratch, or from a curated hodgepodge of whatever we find useful in all the traditions of the world? Hui never really says why such an approach would be misguided, but it seems deeply important to his project that, broadly, new alternatives to modern capitalist technics be based on local philosophical history. Does that insistence on continuity with the past come from a conviction that it isn't quite as gone from our thinking as it seems, or is it just impossible to start a cosmological project from scratch in a world where the default conception of nature we're trying to critique also pervades our entire social experience? These questions don't just apply to China; as with everything in the book, China is one (very important) case in a world full of cultures coming to a reckoning with the shortcomings in the transplanted technical thinking that, at this point, is almost completely international.… (mer)