Speaker
Zhipeng Gao, History & Theory of Psychology, York University
Title
Pavlovianism and human sciences in 1950s China
Abstract
I am currently working on the history of Pavlovianism in the Chinese human sciences in the 1950s, when China was undergoing the communist reconstruction. The first part of my project is aimed at rewriting the history of Chinese psychology in this period. The received historiographical view maintains that in the early 1950s Chinese psychology adopted a Pavlovian-Marxist paradigm and in the late 1950s it suffered a disastrous leftist criticism. I criticize that these views are based on face-value interpretation of historical texts without recognizing the “doublespeak” style, with which the communist officials created self-legitimizing discourses and the scientists undermined the political-academic orthodoxy with performative compliance. By interpreting historical texts as discursive performances, I reconstruct the imposition of Marxism on Pavlov’s theory as a communist ideological token rather than a genuine, constructive theoretical integration. Further, I argue that the late 1950s criticism, despite its arbitrariness, unexpectedly created discursive possibilities for Chinese psychologists to dissolve the Pavlovian hegemony. The second part of my project expends to a trans-disciplinary context; it investigates the differentiated status of Pavlovianism in Chinese physiology, medical science and psychology. In the late 1950s, Pavlov’s theory was continuously upheld by physiologists and medical scientists as being politically correct; in contrast, the Pavlovian psychology was criticized as being capitalistic and reactionary. I argue that the greater ideologization of psychology was conditioned by a number of factors: the Sino-Soviet relations, the shifting Chinese communist policies, professional practices, local social conditions, disciplinary cultures and discursive performances. This historical reconstruction challenges the homogenizing view of the relation between politics and science in the communist China, and demonstrates the ways in which historical localities and dynamics ruptured the overarching political demand.
Bio
Zhipeng Gao is a third-year PhD student in the History and Theory of Psychology program at York University. He received his BS in psychology in China and MA at York University. His MA thesis on "reflexivity" integrates qualitative/dialogical components into quantitative/experimental research methods in order to make the latter more sensitive to cultural diversity and social justice. Currently he is working on a few projects on history of Chinese psychology, and on oral history concerning memory, identity and social conflicts.