Commentary by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Commentary on "In the Scales of History" C o m m e n ta r y b y J e ffr e y N . W a s s e r s tr o m 43 It is difficult to respond in a succinct, linear manner to John Fitzgerald's provocative and wide-ranging essay. This is in part because of the nature of the piece itself: it is a many-layered work that moves agilely and often insightfully between varied themes and modes of analysis in a manner that, while illuminating , is sometimes uncomfortably frenetic. In a review of the same author's splendid recent book, Awakening China, I wrote that reading that text made me feel as though I was being drawn into a text that was always on the verge of spinning out ofcontrol. Still, I stressed, the roller coaster ride was worth it, since the intellectual pay-off at the end was considerable. I My reaction to this much shorter piece by Fitzgerald is similar, in that, once again, a dizzying sensation accompanied my reading of it and yet I learned a great deal from being spun around by the imagery and idea~. I should add, however, that I came away more disturbed this time by the disorienting side of the experience. This is because the essay lacks a key ingredient of the book: a steadying center of gravity to cling to amidst all the swirling . This was provided, in Awakening China, by the trope of . populations coming into or being forcibly stirred into individual or collective selfconsciousness , which Fitzgerald argued doggedly-and to my mind very persuasively -should be seen as having played an absolutely crucial and protean role in Chinese revolutionary discourse. In the essay that is the focus of this forum, the concept of "representation" is perhaps supposed to function in an equivalent way. If so, it does not work nearly as well as a thread to hang onto for support, since it is not as fully developed a theme and its importance is not defended in as convincing a fashion.2 There is another reason why this particular work is such a challenge upon which to comment in a simple, straightforward fashion-at least for me. This has to do with the fact that, like many academics, I wear a number of different hats in my professional life, and I find that my reaction to Fitzgerald's essaywhich I have re-read now several times-varies depending on which one I happen to he wearing. When I think about it as a teacher of undergraduate courses on modem and contemporary China, for example, it strikes me one way. When I think about it as a trainer of graduate students, however, I have another kind of response. Similarly, when I approach it as a member of the particular discipline of history, it leaves me with one set of qualms. But these are not quite the same as those I have when I think about it as someone whose affiliations and interests often cross disciplinary lines, that is, when I approach it Twentieth-Century China, XXIV',NO.2 (April 1999): 43-54 44 Twentieth-Century China as a specialist in Chinese studies, a feminist scholar, a practitioner of cultural studies, and so on. Let me illustrate this admittedly abstract point by briefly focusing on my varied reactions to one part of Fitzgerald's essay. This is the section devoted to autobiographies such as Harry Wu's, family histories such as JungChang's, and collective biographies such as Jonathan Spence's The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Fitzgerald praises all of these works-some of which I should state clearly from the present I like a great deal more than others, as will become clear-for their ability to personalize the Chinese Revolution and bring it down to a human scale.3 When I approach this discussion from the perspective of someone who periodically sets out to prepare a new syllabus for an introductory course on China's recent past, I am very sympathetic to Fitzgerald's concern with finding strategies for making grand events meaningful through individual or collective life histories. I know that if I...