@jumbanho Was RW where she said she write this one because people were confused by the claims in her diss? That's when I feel like an intervention might have been the most fruitful!
But yeah, it's just a painful series of systemic failures all around. I feel bad for everyone involved.
@kissane I wonder if the author of the book was using Google Translate rather than having an understanding of Classical Chinese. I do not study Chinese, but for Japanese, Google Translate often misses nuance, sometimes to the point of giving the opposite meaning of the original sentence, or misinterpreting who is saying what.
If this was the case, wouldn't the reviewers have noticed this? Like, it boggles my mind that this got through to the point of publication.
@DrEvanGowan I will admit to having run a few of the quotations through GT last night. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, and Dykstra must (surely) have degree of fluency to be working with the Chinese-language secondary sources at all. But clearly something has gone horribly awry.
@kissane Yeah I asked my buddy who is an expert on Chinese history and politics, and he also said that the GT idea is unlikely. He also said that Chinese language critiques pointing out the flaws of this book came out soon after publication, so it was only a matter of time before this criticism would come out in English.
@kissane Jesus. From the introduction alone, the reviewer has a level of collegiate affection somewhere between a hungry bobcat and a librarian with a migraine.
Summary of the second paragraph: "We agree that some sources exist."
@carrideen “Her next book-length project continues several of the lines of inquiry from her first book, including its focus on the relationship between textual practices of administration and the epistemological foundations of the state, into county-level archives and administration.”
Edit: you know, the paragraph assessing the Works Cited makes me wonder if she completed this book during COVID library closures. But if so, you'd think she would SAY so instead of talking about new (non-)citation methods? I'm a little confused, I confess.
Edit edit: I definitely had this book on my to-read list. And I'm just sitting here realizing my lack of subject and language knowledge would have caused me to not see ANY problems...
Okay, so, the between the lines here is that this is a massive accusation of intellectual dishonesty. This is the humanities equivalent of one of those papers that sets forth mathematical evidence that a scientific paper's data was falsified.
The authors of this review, who apparently are unnamed, are setting forth evidence of not just being mistaken, but of a pattern of deliberate mendacity. They are making the case that this is not erroneous, but a deliberate attempt to construct a false work of history.
They are being very careful not to come out and say that. They're sticking to just the facts, like a good historian.
@siderea@kissane Oh, no doubt. I'm not excusing anything. I can tell that it's a rigorous review.
Also, the reviewer's name is George Zhijian Qiao. He's apparently issued no comment given the related tension in the field and his lack of tenure.
Dykstra is writing a response, and it's likely to be published in the January issue of the same journal. It will be interesting to read, because the breadth and depth of Qiao's argument seems incontrovertible to me.
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