Telos 151 (Summer 2010), a special issue on China, is now available for purchase. Click here to order.
In this issue, Telos turns its attention to China and a set of diverse encounters between Critical Theory and contemporary Chinese society and culture. Recent issues of the journal have focused on various theoretical or thematic topics, in order to explore aspects of particular conceptual problems. The alternative editorial choice, evidenced here, to organize a discussion of a single country has, frankly, been rare in the history of Telos. When all is said and done, theory can have a hard time focusing on a particular case and its materiality, rather than trying to deduce an account of an abstract problem from some internal logic. Therefore the decision to organize a collection of essays defined in this way—the China issue—has epistemological consequences and poses questions regarding the relationship between theory and its material object. This choice also invites a certain heterogeneity of perspectives, in terms of both methods and values. At stake here is less the internal consistency of theoretical paradigms than the agility of addressing the complex and inconsistent movements—changes, breaks, fragments, returns, developments—in the aggregate of experiences circumscribed by the name of the empirical place. Those experiences and that place, moreover, should also call the purist presumptions of theory into question or at least allow for scrutinizing implicit ideological commitments. Theory cannot be oblivious to the particularities of historical experience: so Telos turns to China. Nor however can experience evade examination by Critical Theory.
