10. Remnant and Hybridization: The Effects of Governing

This chapter will show that the compulsory criticism and self-criticism study sessions were designed for the officials “to bathe the soul,” in order to perform penance and ultimately to transform the self; however, officials can and do create “multiple sites of resistances” that undermine the hegemonic control of the Party. For example, sometimes they neither follow what the Party requires nor refuse to act, but act in an empty form without meaningful ends. This is also called “using formalism to counter formalism.” The anti-corruption campaign has created a sense of fear among officials and the eight-point code has attempted to impose an institutionalized process whereby new identities and interests can be internalized by officials. However, according to our participants, these processes often are the cause of a kind of inactivity, rather than facilitating the presumed ethical subjects. As well as examining the creative resistance to the ethical revolutionary processes explored in this book, we also explore the hybridizations that can emerge in the context of the apparent incompatibility between Asian and Western philosophical traditions. We examine how these contradictory practices can also produce various hybridizations which we explore in this chapter: the linking of science and technology with national development, termed “techno-nationalism”; and the linking of neoliberalism and socialism, termed “patriotic professionalism.”