The University of Manchester

Graduate Student, School of Social Sciences

British Inter-University China Centre student fellow

Thesis Title: Working thesis title: 'Making Space for Difference: China, the World and International Order'

About

My thesis argues that our most common ways of thinking about China in the world, what I call 'modernist' and 'holistic' imaginaries, are problematic in precisely the same way: they align spatial difference in teleological time. The effect is that others are not imagined as properly different, they are just behind. I argue that these two imaginaries are not opposites, but support each other on the ground in the working out of the 'harmonious world' discourse in the case of Expo 2010 Shanghai China. I draw on Doreen Massey, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard to rethink 'harmonious world' in a way that allows for coeval multiplicity.

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