Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China (Voices in International Relations)

From intellectual history to the dazzling, chaotic, and jargon-laden world of digital culture, this book explores how ideas of 'the West' and articulations of China/West difference are produced and mobilized in Chinese political discourse.It foregrounds not only the co-construction and appropriation of civilizational binaries from the 'peripheries' of the international social order, but also the entanglement between ostensibly 'pro-Western' and 'anti-Western' narratives in Chinese nationalism.The book offers an in-depth study of digital reactionary discourse on Chinese social media, analysed within globally interconnected and locally embedded reinvigorations of racial nationalism, authoritarianism, and backlash against social justice movements.Theorizing the postliberal conjuncture from digital China, Zhang delineates how postliberal political sensibilities converge across conventional geopolitical and ideological fault lines.Employing identity markers such as 'East' and 'West' as flex