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I once saw an article saying that there is a culture in the Chinese and Chinese media now, "If you are indecisive, ask Xiang Biao." This may not be an exaggeration. Searching on WeChat, Xiang Biao has talked about involution, love, academic ecology, anxiety of young people, meritocracy, and the recent Russian-Ukrainian war. Almost all the public issues that can be discussed in the Chinese and Chinese media have been wiped out by him. Xiang Biao has a prominent academic identity, but he does not have the sense of superiority to the public that academic intellectuals often have. He himself seeks citations in academic articles, but in interviews, he tends to use plain, descriptive language to demystify a problem and fully present its complexity. This is a treasure for the part of people who have a reflection on elitism and are tired of today's polarized public opinion ecology.

Many people have the impression that Xiang Biao is a person with a relatively vague position, or, on some less controversial issues, he will stand on the side of most people/ordinary people, such as criticism of involution; For those very controversial issues, he generally does not show a clear position, but walks around the issue, showing his audience all aspects of his observations. Poet Toko said in his review of "Taking Yourself as a Method" that the book "has almost no conclusion" on the many issues discussed. Xiang Biao himself said, "My specialty is to go in very concretely, find an interface, and see his contradictions. I try to avoid looking at things from a standpoint."

Yuanzi made a bitter criticism of this "no position" attitude, which was fiercely refuted by many Xiang Biao readers. In their opinion, this style of not drawing conclusions and not standing in line is the reason why they admire Xiang Biao. But I think Yuanzi and these readers have misunderstood Xiang Biao on this point. On those controversial issues, Xiang Biao is not without a position. Rather, he likes to put his position in the nooks and crannies when describing the complexity of things. Therefore, for most audiences, that It's just a flash, and it's basically the same as nothing.

Xiang Biao has some stances, which he himself does not conceal. One of them is "populism" that people should avoid. He directly admits himself as a "petty-bourgeois-style populist" in "Use Yourself as a Method". I have an affinity for populism because I am "uncomfortable to look at" "everyone who has authority."

Borrowing the label he put on himself, I can expand it a little: Xiang Biao’s populism can be discussed from two levels, one is methodological and the other is normative. Methodological populism, a bit of a phenomenological method, suspends the theory, directly and concretely observes and describes things. Xiang Biao said that his way of looking at problems is most similar to those who make lighters in Wenzhou. He has a "spontaneous taste for immediacy" and a resistance to theory. On the one hand, this tendency is related to his experience in studying at Peking University. He lamented that he had read too little in his undergraduate years and had not received any theoretical training; on the other hand, it also represented a method and a style of his own. He is often referred to as "the country gentleman".

As a method, the gist of the squire is to "explain the affairs of one's own small world clearly". "On the one hand, it can be said to be very detailed and empirical, and on the other hand, it pays great attention to the overall structure." Because the squire has been immersed in this small world for a long time, he is very familiar with it, and he can use the local language, or say " The language in which actors describe their lives”, telling the details of this small world. This method is completely different from the deductive method that starts from a general principle and then relies on logical deduction to draw conclusions. Xiang Biao did not want theory at all, but his imagination of theory was different from that of other scholars. He talked about an English paper he published, "Theory as a Picture", saying that theory is not a judgment, but "a picture of the world, and a possible future picture behind it."

The methodological populism of Xiang Biao is closely related to its normative populism, which is mainly reflected in two aspects. The first is the distrust of intellectuals, especially enlightenment intellectuals. This attitude is quite evident, almost throughout several of the interviews in the book. At the beginning of the "Beijing Interview", Xiang Biao and Wu Qi talked about the format of the interview, and suddenly said, "One of the problems today is that intellectuals are not down-to-earth and cannot talk about things from a very specific living state. It’s more inorganic and ethereal.” Later, he talked about his undergraduate experience in Peking University, and admitted that he had a “psychological obstacle” in speaking with intellectuals. He felt that “some intellectuals live in discourse and speak from one discourse to another. The logical deduction between words may be far from what actually happened." He borrowed a word from Wang Hui, "posture", to describe contemporary Chinese intellectuals, "Many people are always posing, speaking If I don’t know something, I’ll give you a judgment.” Even though he spends more time with intellectuals than with other social groups due to his work, he still has no “sense of belonging” to this group of intellectuals. This can also explain why he is so willing to be interviewed by the media, or more willing to convey his views to the public through interviews.

Behind this distrust of intellectuals is a high degree of identification with "ordinary people". On different occasions, he talked about his interactions with the research subjects of Zhejiang Village on many occasions, and even took Xu Zhiyuan to meet the villagers of Zhejiang Village he knew at that time in "Thirteen Invitations". He admitted that he was greatly influenced by Wang Hui, one of which was "to combine with farmers and workers and follow the mass line". In The Theory of the Common Man's State, this admiration for the common man is vividly reflected. The "ordinary people" here should be "ordinary Chinese" to be precise. Xiang Biao felt that the previous "state theory" was put forward by intellectuals, and he wanted to propose an "ordinary people's state theory" based on the expectations of ordinary Chinese people for the state and their attitudes when talking about the state. According to Xiang Biao, the opposite of "ordinary people" is not "elite", the elite is also a part of the common people, and the squires are both local elites and common people. Xiang Biao said: "The key here is not the division between state-society, official-civilian, and elite-mass, but the division between real life and specialized academic and policy texts." Therefore, with "ordinary people" The opposite is actually intellectuals, especially enlightened intellectuals. They are high above the ground and their theories are off the ground. This is why a "theory of the state of the common man" is needed.

Xiang Biao's distrust of intellectuals and his admiration for ordinary people is not a simple personal tendency, but has obvious normative implications. It is no exaggeration to say that Xiang Biao not only has normative stance, but his stance also covers almost all levels of normativeness, including "how the country should be organized" and "how should we live". Xiang Biao said in the above article: "The state theory of ordinary people has a strong tendency to judge values and guide actions. The state theory of ordinary people does not answer the empirical questions of what a state is and what it does, but cares about the state. What should be, what should be done, and how should the masses face the state.” In other words, ordinary people’s concept of “state” has a considerable degree of binding force and guidance on the organizational model of the state. It is also one of the manifestations of popular sovereignty.

What is special about this "ordinary man's theory of the state" is that it places special emphasis on the totality and morality of the state. The so-called "totality" means that no distinction is made between the country, the national community, the state of violent rule, and the executive agency in the regional sense, which are collectively referred to as the "state". The so-called "morality" means that "in the common people, 'state' is still the most recognized category, and 'society' means irregularity and untrustworthiness." In short, "state" means absolute moral legitimacy Sexual incarnation.

In the ethical life, Xiang Biao's position is also related to the "common people". When talking about the squire, Xiang Biao said that the squire will make ethical judgments, but his ethical judgments "must be in line with the practical rationality of the common people." (If I understand correctly, the "practical rationality of the common people" is replaced by "the sophistication of the people", and the meaning may not be too different.) Among them, "harmony" is very important: "Not only do you do it right, but also See if what you do is in harmony with other people."

This involves the "nearby" that Xiang Biao often talks about. The first time he saw Xiang Biao mentioning "nearby", it was in "Thirteen Invitations" that he lamented the disappearance of "nearby" to Xu Zhiyuan. This "nearby" is roughly close to what he refers to as the "small world" when referring to the squire, that is, the layer between the individual and the wider external world. He has some "golden sentences" in it, such as: "The way out for the meaning and dignity of the individual does not lie in the individual, but in the relationship. There is no natural personal dignity, and there is nothing there. You cannot pursue personal dignity, you We must construct the neighborhood, rethink the relationship, and construct the relationship." This sentence seems to be acceptable to anyone in isolation, but when it is placed in the context of "squire", it conveys even more meaning. for complete.

The so-called "relationship" here does not simply refer to the relationship between an individual and another individual, it refers to the relationship between an individual and other people and other things in the small world. Xiang Biao's "small world" is a bit like what Qin Hui called a "small community", that is, an autonomous unit composed of blood or other organic connections. The relationship between "big communities" is not the same (see "Out of the Empire" for details). Qin Hui's small community can bear the function of resisting the oppression from the big community, but the relationship between Xiang Biao's small world and the state, or the system, is not so tense. Xiang Biao said that the squire "started from the small world in which he was based, and looked at the big system, looking at the big system from a distance and independently, rather than simply resisting." It is equivalent to the "people's representative" in the current political system. Petition, but don't fight.

It is not difficult to see that in Xiang Biao, the normative and methodological aspects are often intertwined. The most representative one is the sentence: "Views belong to the people, and sorting them out is our job." Precisely because opinions came from the people (not intellectuals), those opinions had to be valued, and the role of the squire was not only to sort out those opinions, but to use them to justify ethical judgments and political practice.

Here is a little methodological problem: since he is a country gentry, he only represents a small world, why can Xiang Biao put forward a theory of the state that represents all ordinary Chinese? There are two possibilities here. One is that Xiang Biao believes that the common people in his small world can represent the common people of the whole of China. If so, what is the basis for Xiang Biao? After all, China has a vast territory and extremely diverse groups. Another possibility is that Xiang Biao himself has long surpassed the "squire", or, in other words, jumped out of the squire's self-restraint scope of activities. His advice to "become a squire" is for others, especially for those young people. Not for myself. I personally think the latter is more likely. In fact, Xiang Biao himself not only jumped out of Zhejiang Village, but also jumped out of China. He has been working in top academic institutions in Europe for a long time. The research object of "Global Body Hunting" is IT workers in India. Such a person who embraces globalization extremely of scholars, calling themselves "squires" is unconvincing.

Xiang Biao will also admit that "to pay enough attention to the subject status of ordinary people is not to fully accept their political vernacular", "of course there are many negative factors in the state theory of ordinary people." But his attitude is very clear: intellectuals' Opinions are not as worthy of attention as those of the people, unless the intellectuals transform themselves into "squires", go deep into the masses, understand the masses, express the voices of the masses, and narrate the world in which they live in their own language.

Xiang Biao himself admits that he is a "leftist", but from the above perspective, he should be closer to the domestic leftist than the western leftist. In fact, many of the leftists in the West are in line with what Xiang Biao criticized. "We must put forward a universal principle, put forward a model of theory, knowledge, morality, and behavior, and be a critic." On the contrary, Xiang Biao criticized this kind of The intellectual critique is much like the critique of the Enlightenment intellectuals by European romantics or conservatives in the 18th and 19th century, namely, a fascination with abstract universal principles and a critical position on the status quo. Among the (well-known) leftists in China, it is rare for them to choose a leftist position based on their identification with the abstract communist principles themselves. Most of them choose a leftist position because of their identification with the state system, or their attachment to the past, or their simple feelings for the people.

I'm not sure if Xiang Biao is aware of the difference between the two types of leftists. When he said in an interview with Russia and Ukraine that after this incident, the leftists would definitely be suppressed, and an awkward feeling arose. In it, he perpetuates his distrust of intellectuals and "grand theories," spending a great deal of time analyzing Dugin and his Eurasianism, which he believes are the ideological roots behind Putin's invasion of Ukraine. As a "political cognitivist," even I find this judgment too hasty. And when Wu Qi asked whether he could make some "recognition" of Eurasianism, Xiang Biao seemed quite embarrassed. He probably meant that such an ideology has a self-consistent internal logic, and you can only believe it or not. , or accept it or not, it is difficult to argue with him logically.

Xiang Biao was very surprised by the ordinary people in China who quarreled and even ripped their faces because of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Probably in his opinion, this kind of thing will only happen to the ungrounded intellectuals. "Wenzhou people are very unpleasant because they do business, they are relatively skilled in social skills, and they make money with anger. They actually cut off relations and so on." So he can only explain that this is not caused by the ideological difference between the two sides, but only emotionally. conflict. "If it's just an ideological difference, strictly speaking, it can be discussed, but the difference in emotions is difficult to bridge. It is not related to ideological theory, but more to the meaning itself, whether it is good or bad, happy or not, comfortable or not. Feel comfortable with that intuitive reflection.”

This makes people feel incredible. Earlier Xiang Biao said that a logically self-consistent ideology can only be accepted or not, and cannot be debated. Then why did he say that the difference between ideologies "can be discussed"? Also, why does he easily judge that these ordinary people he knows can't sever ties because of ideological differences? More importantly, are these conflicts likely to be based on more fundamental questions of principle?

Xiang Biao is not entirely a relativist. He also said that principles that can be articulated should be protected, such as the "Five Principles of Bandung." If this is the case, his middle school classmates in Wenzhou, who cut ties because of the Russian-Ukrainian war, if the party supporting Ukraine thinks that "Russian aggression against Ukraine" is a violation of such a clearly stated principle, why can't they feel angry and then talk to those who oppose it? How about a person with such a principle to sever ties? If he truly believes that Russia's actions against Ukraine are an act of invasion that violates some of the most basic principles, when he sees some ordinary people feel the same way and is angry, how can he feel that the other party is just an emotion? He seemed to think that his classmates were all inflamed by the whole atmosphere of public opinion, and their quarrels could neither be based on ideology nor more fundamental principles. This is quite different from his previous position of exalting the "autonomy" of ordinary people. In his "Theory of the Common People's State", he even criticized other scholars for not paying enough attention to this point, "We can't be because of the pursuit of ethnographic details. And 'rejection of politics' is to overly routineize and trivialize the behavior and ideas of ordinary people, ignoring their ability to participate in formal discussions and social movements."

I personally feel that although Xiang Biao seems to have always been on the side of ordinary people and opposed intellectuals, he actually wants to maintain the distinction of "ordinary people/intellectuals" more than some intellectuals. "Ordinary people" and "small world" give He brings a sense of belonging and is a paradise for his exhausted academic life. The quarrels of ordinary people brought about by the Russian-Ukrainian war shattered such illusions.

This can also explain why he still gave a plan like focusing on "nearby" for this situation:

"In this case, we really need a way to keep a certain distance from various claims and gestures, and at the same time form a more consistent and self-consistent picture of meaning with our own experience. How to do this? I think It is necessary to return to the understanding of the daily practice of one's own material life. This is actually not so intuitive and simple, such as what work do you do yourself, why you are sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy when you do this work, what is the salary, the whole work situation How to arrange it, where do you live, who built the community, how the land was requisitioned, what building materials were used, how much it cost, etc. If you care more about these things, you will know your anxiety as a person Where does it come from? Know where the social origin of joy, anger, sadness and joy is. Once you have such a basic grasp, you don’t need to write it into a paper. It’s not necessarily very systematic. Events or narratives, you may not have a direct answer, but you basically know what your position is in this society. When encountering other views, agree or disagree, why agree or disagree, and what is the reason? Basically it will be clearer.”

Xiang Biao wants to use "squire" and "nearby" as an antidote to the current polarization of public opinion. When he criticizes Du Jin's obsession with absolutism, the object of his insinuation is obvious. "The problem now is that kind of projection, very simply projecting one's own emotions onto an absolute discourse, turning it into an obsession, creating a great urge to persuade others, and feeling persuaded Others are saving others, because others must be deceived.” Xiang Biao believes that the “grand narrative” put forward by intellectuals is some “absolute discourse” and takes them as the main target of criticism, but aside from this, I I don't think he is wrong, but that "absolute discourse" may not come from intellectuals, but from political powers who claim to be absolutely correct. And those who project their emotions onto an absolutized discourse are the "common people" trapped by the absolutized discourse advocated by the government.

Xiang Biao took the "common people"/"ordinary people" and the "squires" who returned to the common people among the intellectuals as the objects of his hope. He expects the squires to be like "people's representatives", to be the bridge between the state and the common people, which is a good wish, but its naivety is proportional to its beauty. In China, the "people's representative" itself is a part of the system, and it fundamentally represents not the demands of the common people, but the demands that the government wants the common people to make. However, Xiang Biao pretended not to see this. He said that it is not that difficult to be an independent scholar in China. This is probably the academic why not eat minced meat?

More importantly, the common people did not always listen to the squires. As Xiang Biao himself said, they believed in the state more. The state has absolute power and an absolute role in shaping the common people. If the common people are always to be kind and respectable, then the state must always be kind. The question is, is this possible?

Xiang Biao only sees the warm side of the common people in his own small world. I wonder if he has seen those "ordinary people" who are prone to online violence, seekers and victims? Xiang Biao hopes that there will be more squires, and that those who pay attention to public affairs can manage their own small world first, so that everyone's attention to public affairs will decrease, and it seems that the polarization of public opinion will also decrease or even disappear. If he really thinks so, then he is too ignorant of the current ecology of public opinion. It is the intellectuals he despises who are tired of this polarization of public opinion and are willing to retreat from public affairs to their own small world, but because the voices of these people have disappeared, the public opinion field has been replaced by more "ordinary people". occupy. Contrary to what Xiang Biao imagined, the polarization of ideas produced by ordinary people after occupying public opinion is much more serious than when public knowledge is everywhere.

If the public opinion of ordinary Chinese people is to be anti-American, anti-public knowledge, and want to catch traitors, what should the squires do? Xiang Biao felt that it was a bit self-defeating for the public knowing the current situation. He was a leftist, and anti-Americanism was a routine operation. If the polarization tendency of the people worries him a little, he has already found the people who should be held responsible for it: modern society, globalization, network technology, capitalism... This time in the Russian-Ukrainian interview, he looked for it again. One is the "absolute discourse" invented by intellectuals. But there was one obvious factor that he would never mention.

His "state theory for ordinary people" is closed-loop: ordinary people are absolutely good, so a state theory must be constructed from the concept of ordinary people, and ordinary people think that this country is absolutely good, so the state is absolutely good in this In theory, it is absolutely good; the state has an absolute role in shaping ordinary people, so ordinary people shaped by an absolutely good state are also absolutely good. If what some people do is not absolutely good, then either these people are not ordinary people (intellectuals), or they are just blinded by (intellectuals), ordinary people are still absolutely good. I wonder if Xiang Biao has ever thought about whether his own theory is really that different from Dukin's "Eurasianism"?

I agree with Xiang Biao on one point. We both believe that there are some basic principles. These principles are universal and can be grasped not only by intellectuals, but also by ordinary people. I think it is also possible for ordinary people to act based on this universal principle to generate emotions. In theory, Xiang Biao should think so too. For example, he mentioned in "The State Theory of Ordinary People" that the state theory of ordinary people has "the ability to abstract and generalize", which also quoted Yu Jianrong's The concept of "abstract anger" is "beyond one's own direct interests, form judgments on the overall interest pattern of society, and express general issues such as what role the state should play". But when this "abstract anger" involves international affairs, Xiang Biao seems to be surprised. Therefore, paradoxically, on the one hand, he over-beautified "ordinary people", and on the other hand, he seriously underestimated their "subjectivity". An "ordinary person" who is defined and absolutely good cannot have real subjectivity. Only when they may be good or evil can they have real subjectivity.

Contrary to Xiang Biao, I think the way out of the absolute discourse is not to "rediscover the neighborhood", but to try to transcend one's own small world and rediscover "public reason". Confined in their own little world, they are all in contact with people who hold similar views to themselves. Once they believe in an absolute statement, they will only continue to strengthen this belief. Instead, those who believe in some grand theory are more often aware that they are not the same as the people around them, because people around them are less likely to believe those theories as much as they do.

The question now is, what force is guiding the common people to an absolute discourse? And what forces are preventing the formation of public reason from challenging this absolute discourse?

Xiang Biao and I have the same observation on ordinary people. I also think that ordinary people are distinguished by intellectuals, not elites. Not much difference. I also agree with what he said, that ordinary Chinese have a generalized and moralized concept of the country, but because of this, I feel the need for the existence of intellectuals: in addition to thankless intellectuals, And no one would dare to strongly question such a concept despite the danger of being stigmatized and sent to Jiabiangou. Xiang Biao thinks that Confucianized intellectuals are country gentry, while I think Mencius and Fan Zhongyan are the outstanding representatives.

Finding "nearby" isn't without value. If we can find "nearby" traces of what makes us who we are, and echo our inner beliefs (even if they are based on grand theories), if we can find nearby "small but certain happiness" "In order to resist the corrosion of the increasingly depressing environment on our hearts, if we can find those neighbors who have been affected by the epidemic nearby and provide them with warmth and help, then finding the vicinity is indeed of great significance, but this significance is not It doesn't mean retreating from the wider world, it doesn't mean compromising with the big system, it doesn't mean giving up one's right to make general judgments, and it doesn't mean that you can only become a "squire" that is included in the system.

When explaining why he was a petty-bourgeois-style populist, Xiang Biao said that he felt that he was relatively weak and could not be a revolutionary. So we can understand why he feels he is often driven by a general spirit of rebellion, yet we rarely see any "rebellion" he expresses against that behemoth, only some admonitions like "don't go after the center" Word. His revolts are almost all directed at China's fragile market system and those out-of-power intellectuals. What is a word called?

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Extraction code: 46pP