Nationalism and Subjectivity: East Asian Experiences challenges the dominant view of the origins of nationalism, that is, that nationalism first emerged in the post-Enlightenment and industrialising West and spread to the rest of the world as an unintended consequence of imperialism and colonialism. The volume argues that the view is inaccurate because it draws from a western-centric assumption that the western experiences are paradigmatic, an assumption which is deeply embedded in contemporary social science scholarship.
The volume first reconceptualises nationalism as a form of intense collective self-reflection on the polity's identity and how it should be governed so as to bring the analytical focus onto human agency. In other words, nationalism is understood as an intense exercise of collective political subjectivity. It then investigates experiences of East Asia through selected cases: Song China (960-1279), Korea focusing on the Kory? dynasty (918-1392) and the Imjin War (1592-1598), Japan in reference to the idea of Japan as shinkoku (a divine country) and the rise of Kokugaku in eighteenth century and the emergence of Taiwan as a political community. The investigation shows that nationalism as a form of intense collective self-reflection centred on the nation emerged in East Asia independently from the West, thus challenging the dominant diffusionist account of the origins and spread of nationalism.