PORTRAIT AND CONSTRUCTION OF A CULTURAL REALITY. CHINA AND DIEGO DE PANTOJA文化現實的想像和構建：中國與耶穌會士龐迪我
This article proposes a critical reading of how the West constructed "cultural realities" about China, arguing that the arrival of the Jesuits in 1582 marks a decisive turning point: from otherness fabricated through excerpts, textual mediations, and fragmentary imagination to an otherness produced...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
April 2007
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40022/3717 |
| Summary: | This article proposes a critical reading of how the West constructed "cultural realities" about China, arguing that the arrival of the Jesuits in 1582 marks a decisive turning point: from otherness fabricated through excerpts, textual mediations, and fragmentary imagination to an otherness produced through coexistence, sustained observation, and comprehensive understanding. Within this framework, Beatriz Moncó analyzes the trajectory and work of Diego de Pantoja as an expression of an encounter between history and anthropology, capable of articulating cultural singularity and the claim to universality.
The methodology articulates historiography and the anthropology of history, mobilizing biographical chronology and the institutional context of the Society of Jesus to interpret the knowledge devices employed in the mission (strategies of insertion, circulation through networks and spaces, and forms of representing difference). The main conclusions sustain that the image of an "exceptional" China in Pantoja results not only from European presuppositions, but from the practice of co-presence and direct observation that reorients categories and sensibilities. Thus, the article highlights how the construction of the "other" can shift from myth and the "absolute other" toward a situated understanding, without eliminating the tensions and limits inherent to the missionary enterprise. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |