Arif Dirlik


Arif Dirlik was a Turkish-American historian who published on historiography and political ideology in modern China, as well as issues in modernity, globalization, and postcolonial criticism.

Biography

Dirlik received a BSc in electrical engineering at Robert College, Istanbul in 1964 and came to the United States to study science at the University of Rochester, but developed an interest in Chinese history instead. He graduated with a PhD in history from the University of Rochester in 1973. His PhD dissertation on the origins of Marxist historiography in China, published by University of California Press in 1978, led to an interest in Chinese anarchism. When asked in 1997 to identify the main influences on his work, Dirlik cited Marx, Mao, and Dostoevsky.
Dirlik taught at Duke University for thirty years as Professor of History and Anthropology before moving in 2001 to the University of Oregon where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies until his retirement in 2006.
He held visiting professor appointments at the University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of California, Los Angeles, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Soka University of America. He was honored with distinguished adjunct professorships at the Center for Marxist Social Theory of Nanjing University, Beijing University of Language and Culture, and the Northwest University for Nationalities in Lanzhou.
After his official retirement, Dirlik lived in Eugene, Oregon. In fall 2010, he became the Liang Qichao Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. In fall 2011, he held the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. He held a brief appointment as Green Professor at the University of British Columbia in February 2016.
He served on the editorial boards of boundary 2, Interventions, China Review, Asian Studies Review, China Information, China Scholarship, Cultural Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Norwegian Journal of Migration Research, Asian Review of World Histories, Research on Marxist Aesthetics, Register of Critical Theory of Society, International Critical Thought, Pasaj, and Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal.
He was the editor of two-book series, "Studies in Global Modernity" as well as co-editor of a series of translations from prominent Chinese official intellectuals, published by Brill Publishers in the Netherlands.
Dirlik's works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, French, German and Portuguese.

Positions and critiques

Dirlik took an engaged and critical approach to scholarship, oriented by "political relations and their social consequences" as well as "history as the search for universals". In his partner Roxann Prazniak's words, he "continued to the end to see Marxist historicism as the most compelling and comprehensive approach to understanding cultural entanglements in the political economy of global capitalism".
Dirlik spoke on his approach to history and the theoretical issues of historiography in a 2002 interview. As a "practicing historian" Dirlik said, "I continue to practice history not just because it is a way to make a living, which is an important consideration, but because I think that there is some value and meaning to historical understanding." He goes on to say that "I am also appalled at the arbitrary magisterial judgments on history encountered frequently in contemporary literature; a kind of licence that postmodernism seems to legitimize: since we cannot know anything, anybody can speak about everything."
The interview goes on to criticize the field of postcolonial studies, which he took up in such essays as "History Without a Center? Reflections on Eurocentrism," Prasenjit Duara in 2001 replied to Dirlik's charge that diasporic scholars from the former British colonial world had used the concepts of "postcolonialism" to become embedded in Western academic "strongholds" and that they did not represent the majority of the population in their former countries. Likewise even a sympathetic review of the field objected to Dirlik's framing of post-colonial scholars as "agents of capital."
Dirlik was also critical of the "Beijing Consensus" which presented China's economic development model as an alternative—especially for developing countries—to the Washington Consensus. Dirlik argued that this "Silicon Valley model of development" ignores the fact that "the exploitation of China's labor force by foreign countries was a major part of the Chinese development."
Jerry Bentley's 2005 account in the journal World History provides a cogent summary of Dirlik's critiques of the field and his own disagreement. Dirlik, he says, has leveled a "challenging critique" of the field of world history, charging that it "naturalizes capitalist globalization by turning it into human fate" and that scholarship in the field "perpetuates Eurocentric knowledge even as it seeks alternatives to Eurocentric explanations of the global past." Bentley continues that Dirlik has identified genuine problems, but has "harnessed his scholarship to a political agenda." Dirlik "overstated the problems and overgeneralized his critique," falling into the "trap of an originary fallacy," in which he "confuses origin with fate," assuming that historical scholarship must inevitably follow lines established at the foundation."
Po-hsi Chen distinguishes two phases in Dirlik's intellectual work. He sees Dirlik's focus shifting around the time of his 1991 book Anarchism in Chinese Revolution from "historicizing earlier-generation Chinese Marxists and their revolutionary practices and theoretical reflections" towards a critique of "newly emergent postcolonial studies in North American academe as complicit with globalization and neoliberalism".

Personal life

His closest academic collaborators included his mentor Harry Harootunian whom he befriended at Rochester, Maurice Meisner, and his partner Roxann Prazniak.
Dirlik married fellow historian Roxann Prazniak at the Duke Chapel in 1984. They both had children in previous relationships, one of whom is Dirlik's son Nick.

Selected publications

;Books
  • 1978. .
  • 1985. Culture, Society and Revolution: A Critical Discussion of American Studies of Modern Chinese Thought, Durham, NC: Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University
  • 1989., New York: Oxford University Press.
  • 1989. Marxism and the Chinese Experience: Issues in Chinese Socialism, Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe
  • 1991. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • 1991. Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927–1932, Durham: Duke University Press.
  • 1993. What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, Boulder, CO: Westview Press .
  • 1994., Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
  • 1995. Asia-Pacific as Space of Cultural Production, Durham, NC: Duke University Press
  • 1997. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  • 1997. Critical Perspectives on Mao Zedong's Thought, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press
  • 2000. Postmodernism and China, Durham, NC: Duke University Press = special issue of boundary 2
  • 2000., Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
  • 2001., Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • 2001. Places and Politics in the Age of Global Capital, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
  • 2001., Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield
  • 2005. Marxism in the Chinese Revolution, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • 2006. Pedagogies of the Global: Knowledge in the Human Interest, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press
  • 2007. Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press
  • 2008., Durham, NC: Duke University Press = special issue of boundary 2
  • 2009. Kriz, Kimlik ve Siyaset: Küreselleşme Yazıları, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları
  • 2011., special issue of China Perspectives
  • 2011. Culture and History in Post-Revolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press
  • 2012. Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth Century China: Between Universalism and Indigenism, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press
  • 2012. Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers
  • 2013. "Quanqiu xiandaixing zhi chuang: Shehui kexue wenji",Beijing: Zhishi chanquan chuban she
  • 2017. '. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
;Representative articles
  • "," Journal of Asian Studies, 33.2, pp. 193–223,
  • "National Development and Social Revolution in Early Chinese Marxist Thought," The China Quarterly, Number 58, pp. 286–309,
  • "," Modern China, 1.1, pp. 46–74,
  • "," Journal of Asian Studies, 34.4, pp. 945–980,
  • "The Problem of Class Viewpoint versus Historicism in Chinese Historiography," Modern China, 3.4, pp. 465–488,
  • "Socialism Without Revolution: The Case of Contemporary China, Pacific Affairs, 54.4, pp. 632–661,
  • "Chinese Historians and the Marxist Concept of Capitalism: A Critical Examination," Modern China, 8.1, pp. 359–375,
  • "Spiritual Solutions to Material Problems: The 'Socialist Ethics and Courtesy Month' in China," South Atlantic Quarterly, 81.4, pp. 359–375,
  • "," Modern China, 9.2, pp. 182–211,
  • "The New Culture Movement Revisited: Anarchism and the Idea of Social Revolution in New Culture Thinking," Modern China, 11.3, pp. 251–300,
  • "Culturalism as Hegemonic Ideology and Liberating Practice," Cultural Critique, Number 6, pp. 13–50,
  • "," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 21.1, pp. 33–45
  • "Socialism is dead, so why must we talk about it? Reflections on the 1989 insurrection in China, its bloody suppression, the end of socialism and the end of history", Asian Studies Review 14, pp. 3–25,
  • "," Critical Inquiry, 20.2, pp. 328–356,
  • "Asians on the Rim: Transnational Capital and Local Community in the Making of Contemporary Asian America," Amerasia Journal 22.3, pp. 1–24 ; reprinted in Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen, Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader
  • ; reprinted in Edmund Burke and David Prochaska, Genealogies of Orientalism: History, Theory, Politics, pp. 384–413
  • "," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 20.2, pp. 1–31; reprinted in Kenneth Lincoln, Gathering Native Scholars: UCLA's Forty Years of American Indian Culture and Research : 367–396
  • "Mao Zedong and 'Chinese Marxism,'" in Indira Mahalingam and Brian Carr, ', pp. 536–561
  • "Place-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place," Review 22.2, pp. 151–187
  • "Globalization as the End and the Beginning of History: The Contradictory Implications of a New Paradigm", Rethinking Marxism 12.4, pp. 4–22,
  • "," Asian Studies Review 25.1, pp. 1–33,
  • "Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth Century China," in Institute of Modern History, China and the World in the Twentieth Century, pp. 95–142
  • "Colonialism, Globalization and Culture: Reflections on September 11," Amerasia Journal 27.3 : 1–12,
  • "Postmodernism and Chinese History," boundary 2, 28.3 : 19–60,
  • "Women and the Politics of Place: A Comment," Development 45.1 : 14–18,
  • "," Social History 27.1 : 16–39,
  • "Bringing History Back In: Of Diasporas, Hybridities, Places and Histories," Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 21.2 : 95–131, ; reprinted in Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures and the Challenge of Globalization, pp. 93–127
  • "Empire? Some Thoughts on Colonialism, Culture and Class in the Making of Global Crisis and War in Perpetuity," Interventions 5.2 : 207–217,
  • "Globalization and National Development: The Perspective of the Chinese Revolution," CR: The New Centennial Review, 3.2 : 241–270, ; reprinted in Göran Therborn and Habibul H. Khondkher, Asia and Europe in Globalization: Continents, Regions and Nations, pp. 123–150
  • "," European Journal of Social Theory #3 : 275–292,
  • "'Where Do We Go From Here? Marxism, Modernity and Postcolonial Studies," Diaspora 12.3, Winter 2003): 419–436,
  • "," Third World Quarterly, 25.1 : 131–147,
  • "," in Jonathan Friedman and Shalini Randeria, World on the Move: Globalization, Migration and Cultural Security, pp. 141–165
  • "," Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 17.1 : 33–61,
  • "Globalization Now and Then: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Readings of Late 19th/Early 20th Century Responses to Modernity," Journal of Modern European History, 4.2 : 137–156,
  • "Beijing Consensus: Beijing Gongshi: Who Recognizes Whom and to What End," in Yu Keping, Huang Ping, Xie Shuguang and Gao Jian, Zhongguo moshi yu Beijing gongshi: chaoyue Huashengdun gongshi, pp. 99–112
  • "," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (PMLA), special issue, "Comparative Racialization," 123.5 : 1363–1379,
  • "Colonialism, Revolution, Development: A Historical Perspective on Citizenship in Political Struggles in Eastern Asia," Development and Society 29.2 : 187–210, ; reprinted in Kyung-Sup Chang, Bryan Turner Contested Citizenship in East Asia: Developmental Politics, National Unity, and Globalization
  • "Revisioning Modernity: Modernity in Eurasian Perspectives," Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 12.2 : 284–305, ; reprinted in Sven Trakulhun, Ralph Weber Delimiting Modernities: Conceptual Challenges and Regional Responses : 143–177
  • "", China Information, 26.3 : 277–302,
  • , "," International Journal of China Studies, 3.3 : 285–313
  • "," boundary 2, 39.3 : 47–73
  • "", Asian Review of World Histories, 1.1 : 5–44,
  • "," Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Resource Center Publications
  • "Developmentalism: A Critique," Interventions, 16.1 : 30–48,
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