Joachim Kurtz
Decolonizing Hong Kong: Competing Adaptations of a Global Paradigm
Postcolonial and decolonial approaches have a complicated history in Sinophone discourses. Mirroring the different ways in which the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were and continue to be affected by colonial impositions, thinkers have mobilized post- and decolonial tropes for diverse and at times incompatible purposes. Following a brief review of earlier adaptations to counteract “Sinologism”—a China-specific form of Orientalism—and propagate “Asia as method” in studies of global constellations, this paper examines recent calls to decolonize Hong Kong that throw the ideological malleability of the paradigm into sharp relief. At different scales and levels of analysis decolonial theorems are enlisted in today’s Hong Kong not only to critique structural inequities and amplify demands for social and epistemic justice but also to silence dissent and stifle opposition.
Joachim Kurtz is a professor of intellectual history at Heidelberg University. His research focuses on cultural exchanges between China, Japan, and Europe, with special emphasis on philosophy, logic, and political theory. He is currently co-speaker of the Graduiertenkolleg Ambivalent Enmity: Dynamics of Antagonism in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He has published widely on topics such as Asian discourses of self-assertion, Chinese refractions of European nationalism, and the rise of Confucian revivalism.