Sinological Orientalism

Reflections on an Analytical Concept for Chinese Historiography

Abstract

The following paper intends to present the category of “sinological orientalism” from the reflections of Said (1996), Hung (2003), Chan (2010) and Vukovich (2013). Over the course of this article, we pretend to show that Western historiography referring to China, regardless of its erudition, it is engaged by orientalists conceptions that tend to stagnate and stereotype the historical development of Chinese society. Therefore, analyzing some of the main historiographical works about China that were produced in anglophone countries, we intend to show off how the idea of “sinological orientalism” allows us to learn some of the theoretical and epistemological limits of some of those Western sinology works. In the end, the paper shall present a few reflections about the deadlocks that “sinological orientalism” imposes to the researchers and how, in a certain way, we can establish a framework to overcome the political and epistemological limits of this specific form of “orientalism”.