[Reader-list] Remembering Bernard S. Cohn 1928-2003

[sadan]

This is another forward from H-Asia 
Sadan.

H-ASIA
November 26, 2003

Remembering Bernard Cohn (1928-2003)
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From: Qin Shao at TCNJ.EDU

Dear Frank,

I'm probably the last person you expect to have anything to say about
Prof. Cohn. But here I'm. His work has had profound impact on me and I'm
saddened by the news. Please let me know if it is ok to share my thoughts
with the members.

Qin Shao
The College of New Jersey
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I feel compelled to write something about Prof. Bernard Cohn, though I
neither know him nor work in his trained discipline. I'm a historian of
modern China. A few years ago, a colleague of mine introduced me to Prof.
Cohn's _Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India_. I
still remember the first time I read the introduction of the book. I
couldn't finish the thirteen pages at once because I was so overwhelmed by
his insights and the clarity with which he expressed those insights that I
forgot to breathe, and I had to put down the book ever so often to just
catch my own breath. It was like in a magnificant setting of nature that
overtakes us.

I thoroughly enjoyed the aesthetics and power of both Prof. Cohn's
thoughts and his writing, and also made extensive use of his insights in
my own work on Chinese museums, on surveying and mapping in Chinese
society, and on other various seemingly invisible forms of knowledge that
define the power structure in society. His work, unlike any others,
sensitized my understanding of what constitutes power. I liked his work so
much that I used what he said about the power to define the past as a most
significant instrumentality of rulership as an epigram for the chapter in
my book on the printing media.

Prof. Cohn's _Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge_ and Michael North's
_Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of Modern_ are among the non-Chinese
history books that have influenced my thinking the most (Michael North is
in literature). To remember Prof. Cohn is to remember all those before me
from whom I've learned. I wish I had a chance to tell Prof. Cohn the
impact of his work on his unknown readers, but I think he must know, and I
think his students must have told/shown him that many, many times over.


Qin Shao
The College of New Jersey

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