China and the East: Receptions and Perceptions

CHINA AND THE EAST: RECEPTIONS AND PERCEPTIONS

Thursday, 29 May 2025 - 11:00 – 12:30
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, D301 Newman

No booking needed, all welcome!

Welcome/ Fáilte :

Professor Regina Uí Chollatáin (Principal, UCD College of Arts and Humanities)

Plenary:

Professor Anne Cheng (Collège de France, Paris)

‘The question of despotism in the reception of Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois in Japan and China’

Abstract (Cheng): One of the most famous quotes from Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois is arguably: “Therefore, China is a despotic state whose principle is fear”. I suggest we should start with delving into the history of the reception of Montesquieu’s political thought first in Meiji Japan, and then in late imperial China. We should analyse the strategies adopted in Japan to translate such key concepts as the “separation of powers”, the distinction of different types of government, and the opposition between “despotism” and “constitutionalism”. We could then move on to the way Chinese literati of the turn of the 20th century appropriated these concepts, and eventually to the way Chinese intellectuals of present times are challenging both Montesquieu’s verdict and its Japanese mediation in a context of rising nationalism.

Round Table:

• Katherine Brown (Spanish; UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics)
  Cervantes and China: Language, Literature, and the Politics of Cultural Exchange
• Derval Conroy (French; UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics)
  Louis XIV and the reception of the Siamese Embassy, 1686.
• Síofra Pierse (French; UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics)
  China as Smokescreen in Voltaire’s L’Orphelin de la Chine (1755)
• Lucille Raynal (French; UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics)
  Reinventing China: Magots and Émilie du Châtelet
• Porscha Fermanis (English; UCD School of English, Drama and Film)
  Shakespeare, Dickens, and the Chinese Reception of the English Classics in Nineteenth-Century Singapore
• Pinar Dokumaci (Politics; UCD School of Politics and International Relations)
  China, Confucian Political Thought, and Comparative Political Theory