사회 계급 개념의 중국적 수용에 나타나는 특징 = The Modern Subject with Chinese Characteristics: The Chinese Assimilation of “Social Class”

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Based on a historical examination of the intellectual and popular discourses on social class in early twentieth century China and also a trans-regional survey of the Korean and Japanese usages of the Chinese-character word, this paper explores the sociopolitical context and characteristics of Chinese appropriation of “social class” (jieji ). This study focuses on the early period of its appropriation, that is, from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century before 1949. This article examines representative writings on social class by Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Sun Yat-sen, Cheng Fangwu, Guo Moruo and Mao Zedong. By illuminating their different approaches to the concept, it tries to present a dynamic understanding of the class discourses in modern China and to answer the question of how the class discourse contributed to the particular way of constructing the modern subject in China. At the turn of the twentieth century, the ancient political ideal of “great harmony” (Datong ) was replaced by “competition” and “survival” of the social evolution theory and then yielded to “contradiction” and “struggle” of the Marxist class theory. The modern Chinese discourses of social class were never detached from political turmoil of revolution and war. As seen in Mao’s historic article of “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (1925), the urgent task of separating “enemy” from “friends” and “us” at the battlefront, or more practically that of deciding whether to form the united front with the KMT, dominated the social class discourses. Confronting imperialist invasions, Chinese intellectuals/activists also applied the notion of “classes” to the international context and Mao’s “New Democracy” (1940) almost finalized such an approach. This study also approaches the “social class” in relation to the relevant notions of the modern times such as “self,” “society,” “nation” and “imperialism.”